The shared theory of great thinkers is that all science and knowledge comes from a good library, a source of information and technology. Nowadays, with the amount of information produced being so amazingly high, it is being called the age of information production. From this, it can be stated that university and specialized libraries have a very important role.

The Institute’s library, along with the establishment of the Institute in 1995, started its activities with the following goals:

1. Supporting educational, research, and cultural goals of the Institute by preparing the information needed by instructors, professors, students, researchers and others.
2. Gathering a collection of specialized and scientific resources in the fields of Islamic and Human Science and increasing its quality and quantity.
3. Providing information services to meet the individual and group needs of the Library’s users.
4. Using the latest library systems and advanced information tools for optimizing human potential and in order to provide information more quickly and effectively.

Activities of the Library

The activities of the Library are divided into two categories: Technical services and Library System/Services. The activities are as follows:

I. Technical services

A. Collecting and buying materials such as:

1. Persian, Arabic and English books
2. Booklets and Theses
3. Publications (newspapers, magazines, etc…)
4. All other necessary documents (for students and researchers)

All materials collected and bought are entered into a computer program called Nosa. Immediately after the entries are made, all information is set for searching by subject, title, author, or any other method.

B. Organizing

For the collection for the library’s materials to become utile and for users to have easy access, it is required that these materials and their contents be well organized. For this reason, the Library of the Institute organizes the prepared materials according to the accepted international rules and principles and the LC system (which are concordant to the public library system of the Islamic Republic of Iran). After the materials are prepared and the information is registered, it is organized in the following manner:

1. Information cards are prepared to analyze the books by using the public library format which is arranged by index.
2. The information is entered into the computer on to the completed cards. Cards and labels are printed for the books.
3. Printed information is checked with the books and labels are applied.

(For books in foreign languages, the first step is used and by direct Internet use, their labels and cards automatically adapt to the structure of the Library of Congress)

II. Library System/Services

The reason for existence and main duty of every university or specialized library is to provide useful services and establish scientific and information links amongst students, professors and researchers. The Library of the Institute, because of its duty to provide information, has the following services for its users:

A. Book Borrowing System

The book borrowing system of the Library has been in effect since 1999. It has a total of 671 members, a make-up of 443 students, 144 researchers, and 84 employees. (All materials are lended to members according to specified rules and conditions.)

B. Study Halls

The Library has two large study halls equipped with all adequate studying facilities. One is for the use of the teachers and faculty, and the other is for students of the Institute. The Library is open-styled and its users have direct access to all the Library’s materials by utilizing the information derived from its computer system.

C. Publications and the Documentation Center

In this section, all recent and previous publications are arranged in chronological order and are then available to the user. A computer program is currently being developed for the arrangement of these publications. All users of the Library will have direct access to this program and it will very soon be ready for use. In addition to these publications, theses and other important documents are kept in the Documentation Center.

Status of collected materials

The Library has 38,000 books in the Persian and Arabic languages and 11,200 books in the English language. Three-fourths of these books have been categorized and around 100 specialized publications are ready and accessible by all users of the Library. The Library’s computer network system provides all information through the Nosa program