Kairawan

Partner with Kairawan

Kairawan works with libraries, archives, universities, and repositories around the world to make the Arabic and Islamic manuscript heritage full-text searchable, freely and at scholarly standards. We invite holding institutions to formalize partnerships that advance this shared mission, with concrete deliverables on both sides.

Two ways to partner

If your collection is already openly accessible

If your manuscripts are already accessible via IIIF or other open endpoints, no deep technical integration is required. A formal partnership establishes the institutional relationship between us, gives you the concrete deliverables described below, and provides Kairawan with an endorsement letter to support our philanthropic funding applications.

If your collection requires authorization

For collections that require authentication or have access restrictions, Kairawan works within your security framework. Catalogue metadata ingestion happens via your published API endpoints or one-off bulk export, on terms you set. For any specific manuscript we may transcribe in collaboration with you, image fetches happen at processing time only, served directly from your endpoints with attribution preserved. We never bulk-process restricted materials without your explicit, written consent.

What we deliver in return

Six concrete deliverables for partner institutions, listed in approximate order of operational value.

  • Unified discoverability for your collection

    Your catalogue records are ingested into Kairawan's federated search index alongside collections from libraries worldwide, making your manuscripts discoverable through a unified Arabic-script search with prominent attribution to your institution on every result. For specific manuscripts where you would like full-text OCR, we can transcribe on a case-by-case basis as part of the partnership conversation.

  • Embeddable search widget for your catalogue

    A lightweight JavaScript snippet for your catalogue page that adds full-text search across your collection via the Kairawan index, branded to match your site. Most institutional catalogues today are metadata-only; this turns them into deep-text discovery surfaces.

  • Quarterly usage analytics

    A privacy-respecting report each quarter covering the top-viewed and top-searched manuscripts from your collection, with geographic spread at country level. Operationally useful for prioritizing conservation, informing further digitization, and supporting your own grant-application narratives.

  • Free API access for your staff and researchers

    REST endpoints into the full Kairawan index for accounts associated with your institution, with elevated or removed rate limits. Programmatic access for downstream digital-humanities tooling, text-mining initiatives, and bibliographic enrichment workflows.

  • Cross-collection enrichment

    When a manuscript in your collection is identified as a variant copy, commentary, or text-witness of a work held elsewhere, Kairawan surfaces the relationship. You receive these cross-institutional annotations to integrate back into your own metadata, addressing the long-standing problem of the same work sitting siloed in three catalogues with no cross-link.

  • Standardized citation strings

    Every Kairawan result that references your collection carries a properly formatted modern academic citation including institution name, shelfmark, IIIF manifest URL, and license attribution. You do not have to design or maintain any of the citation logic; your institution receives accurate credit across global scholarship by default.

What we commit to

  • Attribution preserved on every search result, every transcription, and every IIIF passthrough.
  • No paywall and no login required for public read access.
  • No revenue model on the corpus; the project does not monetize partner data.
  • No exclusivity demanded or implied; partnership with us does not preclude partnerships with other projects.
  • Transcriptions returned to you are unrestricted; your institution retains ownership to use, modify, host, or redistribute them as you see fit.
  • No bulk processing of restricted material without explicit authorization, and prompt response to legitimate institutional takedown requests.

How a partnership starts

  1. Send a short note to partnerships@kairawan.org introducing your collection and your institutional goals.
  2. We hold a brief introductory call, around 30 minutes, to map technical scope, address institutional protocols, and answer scholarly questions.
  3. We draft a lightweight, non-binding Memorandum of Understanding covering scope, deliverables, attribution, and mutual protections.
  4. We process an initial proof-of-concept slice from your collection and deliver the first transcription package and analytics report within 90 days, so you can evaluate the value before any scaling.

Contact

If your institution shares this vision for open digital scholarship of Arabic and Islamic heritage, we welcome the opportunity to collaborate. A short email outlining your collection and your interest is the most efficient first step.

partnerships@kairawan.org