Digital Knowledge Hub: Leading Arab platform for education and scientific research

The Digital Knowledge Hub (DKH), the prominent Arab knowledge platform developed by the Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum Knowledge Foundation (MBRF), holds a significant position in a world where artificial intelligence (AI) gains traction through its reliance on digital knowledge and develops daily with the proliferation of applications and systems that provide access digital knowledge. Furthermore, the DKH gains more prominence as an integrated digital system with extensive Arab and global knowledge content and contributes to elevating AI’s presence in the digital environment. It includes many cognitive digital sources segregated using sophisticated standard methods that make the searching, browsing, and reading process seamless and flexible anywhere and anytime.

Ambitious and pioneering cognitive mission

The key goal of the DKH is to develop a broad digital knowledge base and ensure its accessibility to the Arab World and beyond. It also seeks to contribute to creating a robust digital infrastructure, which supports sharing knowledge by enriching the Arab digital library with books, studies, and research, and offering interactive educational content that addresses the requirements of different age groups. In addition, the hub seeks to support the dissemination of authentic Arab content and strengthen its position in the digital world for bridging the digital knowledge gap in the Arab World.

The DKH further seeks to offer and develop an integrated open platform that gathers all knowledge outputs of the MBRF along with the materials of institutions of the government of Dubai and a wide range of libraries focused on special age groups and specialized knowledge sectors. The move comes within a comprehensive smart framework to ensure easy and fast access to diverse knowledge sources in different scientific, literary, and research disciplines offered by Arab and international publishing houses. Currently, the DKH has over 600,000 titles divided into nearly 6.5 million digital materials.

Goals of DKH

Another objective of the platform is to provide an integrated Arab system for seamless access to information sources and knowledge content continuously. For instance, it can accommodate the various needs of education and research by offering a knowledge base rich in digital content in Arabic and other languages, while also adhering to international standards and protections when building digital libraries and servers to enhance accessibility and the development, preservation, and availability of digital memory.

Furthermore, it aims to aid in the development of knowledge institutions and societies by providing innovative solutions for digital systems and knowledge content, while ensuring access to all age groups and knowledge fields, as well as providing a unique and integrated Arab system for building libraries and preserving institutions’ digital memory through a unified Arab platform. Moreover, it aims to develop a sophisticated digital storage structure to ensure the conservation and seamless handling of all kinds of digital sources including books, articles, studies, research, images, videos, audio recordings, and other forms of digital content.

3 digital portals and 20 specialized digital libraries

The DKH is divided into three distinct digital portals to offer advanced and personalized search options aligning with the requirements of different users. The ‘Reader General Portal’ includes large knowledge and scientific caches covering a variety of disciplines and areas of interest for readers of all categories and age groups. The second portal – ‘Researchers Portal’ – includes a wide range of materials, studies, research, and scientific articles, which are specifically designed to meet the needs of academic communities and educational institutions. Meanwhile, the third portal, ‘Children and Students Portal’, offers a vast collection of stories and books for children and young people, which is abundant with recreational knowledge content that will elevate their learning experience innovatively and entertainingly.

The DKH has created 20 specialized libraries, recognizing the urgent need to provide specific books and knowledge sources in alignment with their unique requirements and categories, as well as the key role in facilitating research and other related efforts. These libraries are classified by areas of knowledge. Some of the vital libraries are the Artificial Intelligence Library, Energy Library, University Library, School Library, Legal Library, Economic Library, Literary Library, Historical Library, Space Library, Children’s Stories Library, Sustainable Development Library, Arabic Language Library, etc.

Unified digital repository for Dubai Government and its departments

The DKH offers a centralized digital repository, which includes all the digital knowledge outputs generated by more than 25 government organizations and departments in Dubai. It acts as a comprehensive collection portal of annual reports, guidelines, and yearbooks produced by these institutions, ultimately reducing the cost of creating a separate digital repository. Through these efforts, the platform contributes towards the conservation and maintenance services for the digital memory of these entities without any additional costs. It further enables the Dubai Government to reduce extra expenditure and effectively leverage available resources, resulting in enhanced efficiency and productivity that save time and effort. Besides, it aids users to seamlessly explore various digital content of these institutions and the government while accessing it through global search engines. Through this move, the hub will be able to boost the presence of these institutions in the digital space and raise their contributions to various content in the digital landscape.

Unique approach for a beneficial and enjoyable reading experience

The DKH has crafted a new method to study and analyze the behavior of beneficiaries through the launch of a new reading synchronization interface. The advanced tools offer users different choices, which enables them to conduct a smart and thorough analysis of knowledge trends and preferences of the readers.

The specialized libraries included in the platform have comprehensive knowledge maps that direct to various fields of knowledge in the form of clouds of keywords and grouped words. These clouds showcase the knowledge structure of each element as well as the quality and availability of each content within different fields of the library’s knowledge map. This feature enables users to understand the quantity and diversity of sources across various knowledge domains, making it easier to recognize terminology structures. Additionally, it helps publishing houses and knowledge production institutes to understand the entire knowledge representation and map of every industry, as well as identify any knowledge gaps in their libraries. By concentrating on publications based on demands and usage statistics, these institutions can subsequently address these gaps.

An open digital horizon toward limitless knowledge

The DKH’s role goes beyond just being an open knowledge platform. For Arab institutions, it offers a comprehensive solution for building developed digital libraries, substantial knowledge repositories, and safe digital archives. Furthermore, it stands as the perfect tool for adapting digital solution technologies to the Arab World, meeting the needs of Arab students and institutions alike.

The platform distinguishes itself from competitors by not placing restrictions on the use of its services for scientific, knowledge-based and educational research. It is enabled by an optimized approach that removes the need for traditional login credentials, registration processes and passwords, enabling worldwide access to its extensive knowledge base.

In addition, it provides an extensive range of rich and varied information that is updated regularly using cutting-edge technology to compile and organize publicly accessible digital resources into an integrated digital ecosystem. It is the only Arabic platform available to the scientific research community and educators in the Arab World for free.

In line with the MBRF’s vision to develop Arab societies based on knowledge, creativity and innovation, the DKH continues to provide community members with more opportunities for personal development and education.