São Paulo – The Arab-Brazilian Chamber of Commerce (ABCC) and the National Library Foundation will sign a technical cooperation agreement in the coming months to implement cultural outreach projects, including the exchange of digital documents and the review and improvement of document digitization processes and classification.
The agreement was discussed on Tuesday (17) during a meeting between the president of the National Library Foundation, Marco Lucchesi, the president of the Arab Chamber, William Adib Dib Jr., and the institution’s vice president of Marketing, Silvia Antibas. The meeting took place at the ABCC’s headquarters in São Paulo. Lucchesi was accompanied by Ana Maria Haddad, a professor at Centro Universitário Nove de Julho, and Romanian poet and translator Dinu Flamand, who is in Brazil for the launch of his poetry book Homem com remo no ombro [Man with an Oar on His Shoulder], published by Patuá.
“We always start from the vast collection of the National Library, which is a kind of a microcosm that reflects the plurality of Brazilian voices. It would be unthinkable not to visit an institution like the ABCC, because it carries out work that, in my view, has culture as one of its core missions. In this regard, both the National Library and the ABCC share an important common ground,” Lucchesi told ANBA after the meeting.
The terms of the agreement—which does not involve financial investment—are still being defined, but may include the development of joint research projects, access to the digital collection of newspapers written in Arabic or in bilingual Portuguese-Arabic editions, as well as other digitized documents from the National Library’s archives, such as 16th-century navigation maps created by the Portuguese that depict the Gulf region.
Conversely, Lucchesi mentioned that the National Library Foundation, located in downtown Rio de Janeiro, could gain access to the national libraries of Arab countries, always with the goal of promoting access to documents. Silvia Antibas recalled that the ABCC and the Holy Spirit University of Kaslik (USEK) in Lebanon are partners in the Arab Immigration Memory Digitization Project in Brazil. Through this initiative, Brazilian descendants of immigrants from Arab countries or institutions lend documents for digitization that may help preserve and reconstruct the history of the diaspora. According to Antibas, this project could be included in the technical cooperation agreement.
In general, the goal is to promote the circulation of culture and knowledge, expand partnerships, build networks, and broaden the reach of the ABCC’s initiatives beyond São Paulo, she said, adding that as part of these efforts, the institution has been seeking partnerships in states like Bahia, Ceará, Piauí, and Minas Gerais. “The idea is always to have partners so we’re able to carry out our work. In Rio de Janeiro, the National Library is essential because it holds records from the time when the city was Brazil’s capital,” she said.
Read more:
The many nations of Marco Lucchesi
A library from Brazil to the world
Translated by Guilherme Miranda
