Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Vice President and Prime Minister of the UAE and Ruler of Dubai, has inaugurated the Mohammed bin Rashid Library, a new cultural beacon in the region. Built with an investment of 1 billion dirhams, the library aims to cultivate a culture of reading, while supporting the development of creativity, knowledge, and art at both individual and social levels. It will provide a platform for intellectual, literary, and imaginative minds across the region and the world.
The Mohammed bin Rashid Library aims to help people with various interests, especially youth, to access printed and digital books, in order to shape an Arab generation that understands the role of reading and culture in society’s development.
Across its seven floors, the Mohammed bin Rashid Library features a significant amount of content. This includes more than 1.1 million printed and digital books in Arabic and foreign languages, over 6 million dissertations, around 73,000 music scores, 75,000 videos, approximately 13,000 articles, and more than 5,000 historical print and digital journals within an archive covering 325 years, along with about 35,000 print and digital newspapers from around the world, and nearly 500 rare collectibles.
The library is in Al Jaddaf and officially opened its doors to the public on Thursday, 16 June 2022.
Spread across seven floors, the Mohammed bin Rashid Library has nine specialized libraries with more than a million print and digital books.
The nine libraries are the General Library; the Emirates Library; the Young Adults Library; the Children’s Library; the Special Collection Library; the Maps and Atlases Library; the Media and Arts Library; the Business Library and the Periodical Library.
The Mohammed bin Rashid Library’s facilities, which use the latest technology and artificial intelligence (AI), include automated storage and electronic book retrieval system, self-service kiosks, a book digitization laboratory, and smart robots to respond to visitors’ inquiries, in addition to augmented and virtual reality technologies, among others.
