Arabic and Middle Eastern Electronic Library 
Yale University Library
130 Wall Street
P. O. Box 208240
New Haven, CT 06520-8240


YALE LIBRARY NEWS RELEASE

YALE LIBRARY AND NOVODYNAMICS® SIGN RESEARCH AGREEMENT

New Haven, CT.  1 November 2006.  The Yale University Library announced 
today that its team for two granted projects -- Project AMEEL (Arabic and 
Middle Eastern Electronic Library) and Iraq ReCollection -- has signed a 
research agreement with NovoDynamics of Ann Arbor, Michigan, regarding the 
use of its product VERUS™, an advanced Arabic optical character 
recognition (OCR) software solution.

The mission of Project AMEEL is to create a scholarly Web-based portal for 
the study of the Middle East, including its history, culture, development, 
and contemporary face; and within this portal, to integrate new or 
existing scholarly digital content.  Iraq ReCollection project will 
digitize a group of key humanistic Iraqi journals held by Yale and the 
University of Pennsylvania.  These journals will form part of the AMEEL 
electronic archive that permits 1) retrieval and display via the Internet, 
and 2) integration into other existing electronic systems, such as the 
search engine of OACIS (http://www.library.yale.edu/oacis).  Both projects 
propose to develop an approach and "best practices" for scanning Arabic 
language-based humanistic content.

The selected content will be digitized via scanning.  The scanned images 
will be converted, using NovoDynamics’ VERUS Arabic OCR software, into a 
form that permits search, retrieval, and display.  Thanks to NovoDynamics’ 
innovative technology for extracting Arabic information from complex and 
degraded documents, the Yale team can retrieve information from pages that 
has never been accessible in the past. While collaborating with 
NovoDynamics to enhance its VERUS software for library use, the Yale team 
will also be working in partnership with the Bibliotheca Alexandrina in 
Alexandria, Egypt on complementary digitization initiatives.

About Project AMEEL:  This project is funded under the U.S. Department of 
Education's Title VI TICFIA Program, which fosters the development of 
innovative techniques or programs that address national teaching and 
research needs in international education and foreign languages by using 
technologies to access, collect, organize, preserve, and widely 
disseminate information on world regions and countries other than the 
United States.  (http://www.ed.gov/programs/iegpsticfia/index.html)

About Iraq ReCollection:  In response to the damage sustained by museums, 
libraries, and other cultural institutions in Iraq, the National Endowment 
for the Humanities funded an initiative called "Recovering Iraq's Past," 
to preserve and document resources which, because of their intellectual 
content and cultural value, are deemed vital for research and education. 
(http://www.neh.gov/news/archive/20051221.html)

About NovoDynamics:
NovoDynamics' solutions remove the digitization barriers typically created 
by challenging languages and degraded documents and fill a growing need 
within the academic, private and public sectors for advanced data 
acquisition and retrieval technologies. 
For more information, please visit http://www.novodynamics.com.


For Additional Information, Please Contact:
Ann Okerson, Associate University Librarian, Collections & International 
Programs
Yale University
130 Wall Street
P. O. Box 208240
New Haven, CT 06520-8240
Phone: 01-203-432-1764
Fax: 01-203-432-8527
E-mail: [log in to unmask]