Arab West Report Egyptian press summaries and media research for dialogue

 

-          explain plans to develop our database in period 1.7.2010 – 1.7.2012

-          solicit responses from (potential) partners who would like to cooperate with us in building this database (funding, technical assistance)

 

 

Our glossary aims to be non-normative. This means that the glossary will be directed toward explaining opinions on a subject, such as the hijāb, without focusing on the norms and values prominent in Egyptian society. We thus describe the opinion of qualified Islamic scholars but also other minority views that may exist in society. That is an added value that is only possible because AWR has been following discussions in various Arab media over the past ten years. The glossary list has been revised in 2008 with new terms and definitions added. The glossary contains short and long explanations.

 

Names of organisations can often be translated in different ways, all of which are correct from a translator's point of view but having different names for the same organisation makes it difficult when trying to find a particular organisation. We found 9138 different names for approximately 2000 different organisations. One of our staff members is currently working on standardizing the organisation list using Joomla.

 

We collected all numeral references of Qur'ān (over 1474), Hadīth (82), and Bible (880) from 1997 till week 26 of 2008. This helps to understand how references to religious texts are used in the current discourse.

 

We collected all of the titles, over 1482, of books mentioned in our articles from 1997 till week 26 of 2008. This includes both book reviews as well as references to concrete books in the articles we selected for AWR. For the Arabic titles we have transliterated their names and they will be checked and standardized. Foreign book titles are checked and placed online.

 

We have collected 3655 names of places and countries mentioned in AWR starting from 1997 till week 26 of 2008. The spelling of Arabic names was standardized according to the transliteration system of the Library of Congress, prepared for replacement and subcategorized according to districts (merakaz) and governorates in Egypt. We were also able to make short descriptions of a number of important Egyptian cities and villages relevant to events related to certain incidents and occasions.

 

By January 1, 2009 we completed writing text boxes describing personalities in who-is-who for all the weekly issues from 1997 up to week 18 of 2008. All these weekly issues were also language edited and parsed.

 

All above lists will be made scrollable for easy search and reference. Only names appearing more than 4 times in our “Who-is-Who” will be made scrollable. Classification following week 26 in 2008 will continue once the transfer to a Drupal platform and all lists were completed.

 

The “Who-is-Who” should include basic information such as the person's nationality, their profession, their religious or political affiliation and well as a brief note connecting them to relevant new items. It further more connects to statements from or about these people in our database.

The names of the "Who-is-Who" will be brought in the subject index under the relevant subjects, making it possible to search for people who have written or made statements on specific subjects.

Our main indexer is Eng. Sawsan Gabra Ayoub Khalil who also selects articles for translators and is thus well acquainted with the selection criteria for the articles that will be placed in the AWR. Also indexation of individual articles will be picked up again once the transfer of all data to Drupal has been completed. The index follows a tree-like system similar to the Library of Congress and Dewey classification system. Later on in the process the AWR index will be linked to both international indexation systems. Developing our own indexation system was needed because neither systems provide a comparable detailed split up in subject categories as the AWR index does.

With the help and support of the interns we have written short biographies of personalities related to Arab-West mutual understanding. At present there are 42 biographies online.

All the above-mentioned searches can be combined. It should also be possible to combine search with date and name of publication in order to limit the research to a specific period or publication.

·         Holy Family tradition photos, development of tradition and importance of tradition for our understanding of Christians in a Muslim country today.

 

All above mentioned categories will be finished before September 1, 2010. Of course there are ambitions that cannot be finished before this date. Those will be listed below.

 

 

In 2007 we started work on an Arabic version of Arab-West Report. The creation of the English EDC has shown that a database with texts on issues relevant for dialogue between the Arab world and the non-Arab world with advanced search functions is a unique resource which fills a niche in the field of internet databases and we believe that this also applies to Arabic articles. It is now possible to visit our Arabic website and read translated versions of our special reports as well as our editorials. At the moment all of the special reports from 2007 are online and we are working on getting all of our reports online. Also the lengthy investigative Arab-West Papers should ideally be translated.

We aim to improve our EDC and connect it to relevant academic institutions and their electronic libraries so that its full potential is realized and it becomes a valuable, highly-regarded resource.

 

 

 

·         Search feature improvements: articles will be searchable under a variety of different criteria, such as peoples’ names, geographic locations, organization names etc. Geographic locations are organized in a string of village, markaz (district), governorate and country and are for Egypt only linked to a map, showing immediately where in Egypt a particular markaz is located. Individual articles can then be cross-referenced for other articles featuring the same person/organization/place/book/Bible/Qur'ān verse. Searches can further be combined with either date or name of publication in order to limit the research to a specific period or publication

·         Search on subject index. Make it possible for users to print the full subject index for easy view of the tree. AWR subject index match library of congress and dewy subject indexes

·         Extending work on biographies of significant figures, linking these biographies to all reviewed texts in which the figures are featured.

·         Proximity search for transliterated names (a la Google’s “Did you mean…”)

·         Sort search results by date/publisher, improve display of search results to show date published, publisher, author.

·         All summary translations to be cross-referenced with original Arabic source texts

·         Searchable full-text PDFs of Arab-West Papers to be added to the database

·         Improving the display and readability of articles and the homepage to Web 2.0 standards

·         Improve SEO (Search Engine Optimization) so EDC articles appear in Google searches

·         Providing an overview of Arab media with short descriptions of each medium, where does it stand, quality rating, etc. This quality rating can then be used to provide a real-time watch on the quality of media reporting, arranged by newspaper or reporter.

·         Media watch, listing articles that do not meet basic criteria of media ethics and providing content criticism. Users have to know these articles have been published but also why they are not reliable. Tools will be developed to help students discover why to be careful with certain articles. The media watch can also recommend articles for their excellent quality or for giving background information..

·         Selective automated mailing. The user can type in what categories from the subject index he/she would like to receive by e-mail and instead of receiving the large entire weekly issue of AWR the user receives only those articles the user is interested in.

·         Add more photos in the text to make database more attractive. Photos should help explain texts as much as possible.

·         Bibliography of books and articles in European languages about Muslim-Christian relations in Egypt. This work was started by Cornelis Hulsman prior to going to Egypt in 1994 and was based on systematic library research. Search possibilities according to the period that the book or article covers, subject and name.

·         Future plans include listing books and articles published worldwide about the Holy Family traditions. Later, other traditions that are relevant for an understanding between different cultures could be added.

·         A Dutch database featuring some 100-200 background articles translated into Dutch which then provide background for a Dutch media watch, linked to the AWR for Egypt.

·         Interviews carried out over 15 years by Cornelis Hulsman, made available online and linked to transcription texts.

·         Solve the ‘Ayn’ problem within our database: at present all transliterations of the Arabic letter ‘ayn are carried out with an English letter ‘c’ in superscript (ie ^c). In html coding this is carried as ^c but also sometimes appears as a standard ‘c’ creating some confusion amongst words such as cAlī, sharīcah etc.

 

 

 

CIDT will carry out

 

 

 

The following jobs are part of phase 1 of the new AWR to be finished until July 31, 2010.

 

 

The following are jobs to be carried out as soon as the basic system is working.

Priorities should be depending on the general functionality.

 

 

4. e Additional jobs (non IT) which are necessary to enhance the overall effect of the system

 

 

August 12, 2010