Abu Dhabi: At the click of a button, over 500,000 information sources will be available for students, teachers and researchers in order to create and provide access to a shared knowledge environment. eFada project — which means ‘benefit’ in Arabic —will enhance the education and research resources available to stimulate the UAE’s knowledge economy and harness the power of information and knowledge to contribute to the continued development of the UAE society.
Ankabut, the UAE’s advanced national research and education network, is the project manager of the newly born eFada initiative to support research and academic innovation by elevating education standards.
“Ankabut is an excellent hub as it enables us to discover the realm of human experience as the network spreads out to intellectual and creative centers in the UAE and extends to similar points around the world,” said Shaikh Nahyan Bin Mubarak Al Nahyan, Minister of Higher Education and Scientific Research at Paris Sorbonne University yesterday.
“I am quite excited by the great potential by Ankabut network and its centrality in building of our national capacity in education and research,” Shaikh Nahyan added.
The mission of the consortium of academic and research libraries is to create and provide access to a shared knowledge environment that supports the teaching, learning and research goals of its member
“eFada is a very simple page which will help in increasing the power of information and knowledge by providing at least one terabyte (1,000 gigabytes) of electronic or hard copy resources,” Dr Ahmad Dabbagh, eFada project manager, told Gulf News.
“Students will no longer suffer from spending hours on researching. Through eFada, any member related to the academic and education field will be able to view several options including how many researchers have worked on a certain topic or how many research papers have been done by others within the UAE or outside,” Dabbagh explained.
eFada, which started almost a year ago, will work extensively with nine universities and institutions within the UAE in a period of six months to one year.
UAE University, Zayed University, Khalifa University, Abu Dhabi University, Higher Colleges of Technology, Petroleum Institute and Masdar are the participating parties in the eFada project and other universities are welcome to join, Dabbagh pointed out.
