Ganjineh, the Owrang Book Treasury

Do you remember the name of a book? Would you like to know where it can be read? Do you know the author and have lost the title? Are you after a particular subject? Do you have the original in hand and wonder who has translated it? Are you curious what the writers of one country have written? Do you want a book for your child? Have you searched everywhere for a title and come back empty-handed? And do you want to be sure that the copy in front of you is a legal one?

Ganjineh, the cultural library of the Owrang Institute, was built for these questions. A title, an author, a translator or a subject is enough to begin, in Persian or in English. Ganjineh takes you straight to the source, where the complete legal copy is available. The name of that source is printed beside the title, and a small label tells you whether a PDF, a full text, an audio file or a video waits behind the link.

The shelves of Ganjineh open onto the great open collections of the world. Among them are the Library of Congress, the Internet Archive, Open Library, Project Gutenberg, Wikisource, the Bodleian Library and the Vatican Library. Two more have just joined them, the Berlin State Library and Gallica, the digital library of the National Library of France. Beside them stand collections that belong to Persian readers. The Kanoon Archive holds the works of the Institute for the Intellectual Development of Children and Young Adults from the years 1344 to 1357. And there is a shelf of books donated to the library by their authors and publishers, each with written permission.

Every book has a reliable catalogue card in two languages. The card gives the title, the author, the translator, the year, the shelf and a short summary, in Persian and in English, so a reader of Persian can walk through German drama and a reader of English can find their way around Persian verse. Artificial intelligence helps prepare these cards, and a human editor is going through all of them, card by card. Every card also carries a link for reporting a problem, from a name or a date to a shelf or a link, and every report that arrives today makes the card more exact for tomorrow's reader.

As soon as a book is found, the list of its translations into other languages is placed before you, together with the full record of the book. For plays, poetry and the classics, this can matter as much as finding the book itself. When two authors share a name, both appear, each with their own works, and the choice is yours.

The collection now contains nearly three thousand works and grows every night. The page opens as a row of shelves, each with its count, from drama and poetry to philosophy, cultural history and books for children. Within each shelf, books are arranged in proper Persian alphabetical order for Persian readers and in Latin alphabetical order for English readers. If you wonder what one country has written, ask by nationality and subject. A search for German drama brings up Faust, Woyzeck, Mother Courage and The Visit. If you want a book for a child, the Kanoon shelf is the place to start, and a click on Arash the Archer opens the book at once. Soon Ganjineh will also offer easy access to audiobooks, first for children and later for all ages.

If you have searched everywhere, ask Ganjineh anyway. Ganjineh is a growing library. Some questions are answered at once, and when a book is not yet in the collection, Ganjineh searches the world's digital archives itself, a process that takes about a minute. Every confirmed find is added to the shelves. One reader's question becomes the next reader's answer.

And the copy in front of you is a legal one. For books that are still in copyright, Ganjineh gives you the direct address of the publisher. The library follows a single rule in choosing books. The source must be legitimate, and the rights of the author and the publisher must be respected. Judgment of a book's content is left to the reader.

Searching, the cards, the address of every book and the recorded translations are free to everyone. Two services are for members, the book guide and the new books on the market, because each request requires new work and additional expense for the library. Membership is five dollars a month or fifty a year, and anyone may join at any time and help the shelves grow.

Ganjineh is open at
https://owrang.org/world-book-library/