Qatar National Library (QNL) was inaugurated in 2018 in an iconic modern building designed by leading Dutch architect Rem Koolhaas. QNL can lay claim to being the largest and most successful public library in the region, serving an estimated 500,000 users per year with a wide range of general and academic content. 

QNL serves an English and Arabic speaking population with a fully bilingual site. They subscribed to Niche Academy in 2019 to help train staff and support users. The QNL reference team liked the wide range of tutorials available on the Niche site and the user-friendly tone and approachable style of all tutorials.  Niche tutorials allow QNL librarians to work more efficiently, as users can get help at their point of need.

Seeing good usage from their English-language tutorials, QNL wanted to provide the same service to their Arabic speaking customers who often prefer to read in Arabic when using library databases and research tools.

Carol Daul El-Hindi, QNL’s Manager of Reference Services, commented:

“It is easy to create tutorials using Niche. Niche supported us with translating existing English tutorials into Arabic, which was a time saver for us. We were able to customize the tutorial videos for the specific needs of our audience.”

QNL now has Niche tutorials for the library’s popular subscriptions including Overdrive and Mango; each one available to the customer in their language of choice and with additional Arabic translations planned. QNL also added their library’s own branding and then opened their academy of tutorials to anyone else who might find them useful. This means that any library in the region and beyond can make QNL’s Arabic tutorials available for their own staff and users.

Having Arabic Niche tutorials increases the library’s inclusivity, making their resources available to people in their preferred language.

Niche is now planning more tutorials on academic resources to meet QNL’s specific requests. Niche COO Jared Oates said:

“Working with Carol and the team at QNL has been a great experience for us at Niche Academy. We greatly appreciate the work that their librarians have done, and their feedback has been extremely helpful in driving enhancements of the Niche experience for all libraries”.

If you want to learn more about Niche Academy, contact DCA today.