The Arcadian Library and Bloomsbury Publishing Launch Arcadian Library Online

The Arcadian Library and Bloomsbury Publishing are delighted to announce the launch of Arcadian Library Online (www.arcadianlibraryonline.com) today, enabling all to discover how the Middle East and the West have interacted over a thousand year period ?and how this relationship has directly resulted in the advancement of science, medicine and culture.

Collected over the last 40 years, The Arcadian Library has grown to become one of the world?s most significant private collections recording the historical interface between East and West, and is renowned in academic circles for its excellent and unique holdings. The Arcadian Library?'s collection is distinguished by its rarity, importance and quality, and includes manuscripts, early books and incunabula, documents, maps and printed books.

The Arcadian Library partnered with Bloomsbury Publishing to digitize this rich collection of books and publish them on a specially designed and expertly curated digital platform. Now the first module (History of Science and Medicine) of this treasure trove of scholarly and historically significant material is available in beautiful, high resolution digital form. Modern science and medicine owe a great deal to ideas, inventions, remedies and techniques developed in the Levant, Mesopotamia, Persia and Muslim Spain and the Arcadian Library?s collection focuses on this invaluable legacy. 

For the first time, Arcadian Library Online will enable individuals and institutions to gain exclusive access to the rich resources held in this private collection, previously accessible to scholars on an invitation-only basis. This creates a tremendous opportunity for research and learning, widening access for researchers to study the transmission, reception and circulation of early medical and scientific knowledge from the Arab and Islamic world. Users can search and view images from the Library?s holdings, and explore its documents, manuscripts and early books in detail.

The Arcadian Library is essential for anyone who wants to understand the relationship between the Middle East and the West; how it developed, and how it evolved to where it is today ?at the forefront of our political, economic and social discourse.