Ashraf Abo Arafe
The Minister of Information, Dr. Abdulmonim bin Mansur Alhosny, presided over an Omani media delegation accompanied by Dr. Mona Bint Fahad Al Said, Assistant President of Sultan Qaboos University for International Cooperation and Hamad Bin Hilal Al Ma’amari, Undersecretary of the Ministry of Heritage and Culture for Cultural Affairs during the visit of the Omani delegation to the French National Library, On the occasion of the Sultanate’s participation as a special guest at the Paris International Book Fair.
The Omani Minister of Information and his accompanying delegation inspected the library building, which includes most specialized collections of books, maps, pictures, manuscripts, coins and medals, and reviewed the section devoted to the Sultanate’s publications. It was agreed to provide it with a series of Omani publications.
The library has more than 14 million books and printed books, including 5 million books, which can be browsed online for free and in all languages, including 250,000 manuscripts, 360,000 titles, 800,000 maps, 2 million musical instruments, a million sound documents and tens of thousands of film materials and photographs.
The Oriental manuscripts of the library also contain rare collections of manuscripts in history, astronomy, marine sciences, some human and philosophical sciences, as well as copies of the Koran written in various Islamic eras that have been collected for centuries by French merchants, travelers and diplomats in Arab and Islamic countries. The library building consists of 18 floors including 7 floors for offices and 11 floors for books.
