Research Projects

In addition to our services for researchers and students, the Aga Khan Library aims to expand its impact through scientific research and publication.

Currently, we are working on two research projects:

The Aga Khan Development Network (AKDN) Bibliography, in which we are tracing the life of the AKDN through its publications.
Muslim Civilisations Abstracts (MCA), in which we are promoting scholarships in vernacular languages of Muslim-majority countries among Western and Eastern academics.

AKDN Bibliography

This project aims to create a corpus of:

All publications published by the AKDN.
The speeches of His Highness Aga Khan IV, which serve as policy statements for the AKDN.
The critical literature produced by others on the AKDN and its activities.

The AKDN is a group of agencies, institutions and programmes with mandates that include the environment, health, education, architecture, cultural heritage, microfinance, disaster reduction, and rural development. It has been built up and developed over the past four decades with funding and guidance from His Highness Aga Khan IV.

Muslim Civilisations Abstracts

This bibliographical project intends to collect and distribute multilingual summaries of scientific publications first published in vernacular languages of Muslim-majority countries. Our goal is to close the gap between different scholarly traditions, and offer a tool for scientists and librarians to expand their resources while promoting the scientific work of researchers outside of Western academia. The MCA project has published three books since its inception in 2009. In its current development under the Aga Khan Library, it will become an online database.