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NYU Receives $500,000 Grant to Support Arabic Collections Online

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NYU Receives $500,000 Grant to Support Arabic Collections Online

New York University Libraries, a leader in digital library development, today announced that the philanthropic foundation Carnegie Corporation of New York has made a grant of $500,000 to support Arabic Collections Online (ACO), a major project to create a publicly available, digital library of public-domain Arabic language content.

ACO aims to digitize 23,000 volumes from NYU and partner institutions and make them accessible to the public on the ACO website. ACO is a partnership between New York University Abu Dhabi (NYUAD) and NYU New York and began in 2013 with funding from NYUAD.

To date, nearly 8,200 volumes have been posted to the site, covering more than 5,000 subjects; 2,000 more have been digitized and are in process. NYU’s Digital Library Technology Services developed and manages the online interface, a web portal accessible around the world. NYU expects to reach its 23,000-volume goal by the end of 2020.

“Arabic Collections Online has become extremely popular in the Middle East, where access to libraries, especially outside of major cities, can be difficult,” said Ginny Danielson, head of the NYUAD library.

NYU is coordinating the digitization of Arabic language books from six leading academic libraries: NYU, Columbia University, Cornell University, Princeton University, American University of Beirut (AUB), and American University in Cairo (AUC). The books encompass fiction, poetry, literature, criticism, culture and society, economics, history, law, biography, and Arabic language and grammar.

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The books—all in the public domain—range in date from very early materials to imprints as late as the 1990s. Many of the older books are rare or fragile, and nearly all are out of print. ACO ensures that their content is saved digitally for future generations.

Established in 1911 by business magnate and philanthropist Andrew Carnegie (1835-1919), Carnegie Corporation of New York is headed by its president, Vartan Gregorian. The Corporation focuses on the areas its founder considered of paramount importance: international peace, the advancement of education and knowledge, and a strong democracy.

“We are so proud that the work of ACO has been recognized with philanthropic support from Carnegie Corporation of New York, which has been a funder of numerous digitization projects aimed at improving access to scholarly resources,” says Dean of Libraries Carol A. Mandel. “This generous grant is helping us bring great library collections of Arabic materials to a wide audience, free to anyone, anywhere, with an internet connection.”

Key audiences for ACO include universities with Arabic programs worldwide, secondary educational institutions in the Middle East, and readers of Arabic everywhere. Users span the globe, including China, Vietnam, and Iceland, but currently more than 80 percent are in the Middle East.

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Amr Diab Gets Hacked on Twitter

Amr Diab’s Facebook page has announced that his twitter account has been hijacked by anonymous and now tweeting political.

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Amr Diab Was Hacked On Twitter!

Update: Amr Diab’s Facebook Page announced that “Amr Diab’s Twitter account has been restored successfully and you can follow Amr’s tweets normally now”

Amr Diab got hacked on Twitter

On Thursday 9th of Jan, Amr Diab’s Facebook page announced that Amr Diab’s Twitter account has been hacked by anonymous and now tweeting politics!

Amr Abdul-Basset Abdul-Azeez Diab  (born 11 October 1961) is an Egyptian singer and composer of pop music. He was awarded the World Music Award for Best Selling Middle East Artist, three times: 1998 for the album “Nour El Ain”, 2002 for the album “Aktrr Wahid Byhbak 2001” and 2007 for the album “El Lillady”. Amr Diab also won The African Music Awards 2009, Big Apple Music Awards; Life Achievements Awards: Best Singer of The Year in 2009, and Best Male Act in African Music Awards 2010.

He is known as the Father of Mediterranean Music He has created his own style which is often termed “Mediterranean Music” or “Mediterranean Sound”, a blend of Western and Egyptian rhythms.

In The Mediterranean in Music, David Cooper and Kevin Dawe referred to his music as “the new breed of Mediterranean music”.According to author Michael Frishkopf, Amr Diab has produced a new concept of Mediterranean music, especially in his international hit, “Nour El Ain”.

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In his analysis of The Very Best of Amr Diab album, Victor W. Valdivia of All music said: “His music melded traditional Arabic sounds and textures with Western rhythms and instruments. The mesh was dubbed Mediterranean music, and The Very Best of Amr Diab displays Diab’s superb skill in creating it.”

In 1997, he won three awards at the Annual Arabic Festival: one for Best Video, for Best Song, and for Best Artist of the Year. Diab received a Triple Platinum Award for the sales of Nour El Ain and a World Music Award in Monaco.

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Review: Sherine Ana Keteer on Social Media

Sherine ‘s new album “Ana Keter” in Social Media

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Review: Sherine Ana Keteer on Social Media

After the success of the previously shared overall analysis of Sherine’s new album “Ana Keter” and her social media presence, we decided to fulfill your requests with more details and additional insights.

The report is from Jan 15 through Jan 31, 2014; however, starting Feb, we noticed that Sherine’s team has enhanced and developed how they engage with fans on Facebook.

Still, there’s more to do; please review the slides below to know what exactly they are missing with recommendations.

Check out the report:

Key take-outs in 15 days after the launch:

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  • Album gained 11 million views in 2 weeks on YouTube
  • YouTube Channel subscribers boosted by 90K subscribers in 15 days out of 127K total subscribers overtime
  • Buzz reached 15K tweets/RTs since the launch on Twitter
  • How do people talk about the album/Sherine on Twitter?
  • People are sharing songs from YouTube & SoundCloud
  • +90% positive sentiment on Twitter
  • Sherine’s Twitter account is excellent at spreading the news about the album’s success.
  • People are tweeting the song’s lyrics.
  • Sarcastic tweets about Sherine & few songs (regular) -  Almost zero negativity about the album
  • Album teasers on Facebook created credibility for Sherine’s page, reflected in the page results after the album’s launch in the next 15 days with 92K Interactions & 312K New Likes.
  • The album received tremendous engagement on the launching date of Jan 15. However, no posts for four days after the launch negatively affected the interactions.

Recommendations:

Sherine Abdel Wahab’s Facebook page would have received double or maybe triple new likes and interactions if the improved posts’ quality; please find below the points taken:

  • Long updates with no extra value-added will lead to losing your fans’ interest
  • The text-only format isn’t preferred, as it is well-known that they generate less reach than other content (Facebook announcement)
  • A call to action is essential to generate leads & increase engagement
  • Each post has to have its visual, audio, or video so you can attract/engage your audiences
  • Understand the situation and act upon it, always be relevant to the time and avoid posting irrelevant content at the wrong time.
  • Revise the tone of voice in future activities.

To recap -  Overall performance is average to good -  Enhance your content formatting -  Improve the tone of voice on all networks -  Be creative to engage your fans better -  Be Consistent -  Start your SoundCloud account.

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Putin, Obama war on social media starts with unfriend on Facebook

New stage of the cold war, is it?

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Putin and Obama War on Social Networks!

The Social media war between Putin and Obama started with UnFriend, this is the action taken by Russian President Vladimir Putin to end the Facebook diplomacy with American president Barack Obama.

The unfriending comes after an official White House update about the possibility of a US-Syrian war. President Putin revealed that Obama’s updates about the Congressional debate on a possible war with Syria have annoyed him.

After unfriending, President Putin update status on profile “Something I should have done a long time ago”

Also, He said to Russia’s Pravda News Service “President Assad and I, we are the Facebook friends.  We like the same pages, we share pictures of cute women and all that.  Obama needs to lighten up on there, it’s not for serious stuff,”

President Obama’s latest posts about the possibility of the war in Syria have been reported by someone and he received a warning from Facebook that he will be prevented from posting on his profile for 24 hours.

He has also commented “Really, Putin needs to grow up.  If he didn’t like that [post], he could have just hid it from his news feed instead of creating all this Facebook drama,”

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JOE BIDEN “Vice President of the United States” announced to reports that President Obama has signed into his Twitter account to unfollow Putin.

The turmoil generated between Putin and Obama over their dispute on the Syrian crisis. Expanded to reach the social networks

 Putin and Obama on social Networks

The question now is, are we witnessing a new stage of the cold war between the two countries, will they continue the war online instead of the military tactics and old spy war?

It’s obvious that social media is really changing the game in everything, and now it’s taking over on a very high level.

Keep an eye on Digital Boom and we will keep you posted with more news and updates on the cold war and even more…  

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