Int. Libr. Rea. (1985) 17, 357-370

Coverage of Islamic Literature in Selected Indexing Services

A. SATTAR* and S. ur REHMAN*

‘The worldwide Muslim population is estimated to total from 600 to 800 millions.’ They speak scores of languages and comprise about 300 distinct ethnic groups. 2 Literature has been and is being produced by and about them in almost all the languages of the world. Pearson estimates that at least 2000 significant articles are published every year in Western languages on Islamic subjects.3 Anwar holds this estimate highly conservative. He thinks that this estimate represents only a small fraction of the Islamic literature that is being produced in all the languages of the world. He also observes that the growth rate of book production and other literature in Muslim countries is gaining momen- tum and will further increase as educational and research facilities expand in these areas. 4 However, access to this growing body of literature is inadequate. No comprehensive bibliographic service is available in the Muslim world. Muslim countries are especially lacking in adequate indexing and abstracting services. Because of lack of any effective indexing services at an appreciable level of scope and treatment, these countries rely on the abstracting and indexing services of the Western world. The Western indexing services, though claiming international and multidisciplinary scope, have certain limitations, and consequently do not have exhaustive coverage of the literature of the Muslim countries in their declared fields. Because of bias in their coverage for certain geographical areas, languages, types of materials, and subject fields, a major bulk of Islamic literature is excluded. Consequently a substantial part of the literature produced in the Muslim countries, which could be of vital interest to scholars interested

* Department of Library Science, University of the Punjab, Lahore, Pakistan. ’ The hew Encyclopaedia Rritannica; Macropaedia (1983). 15th edn, vol. 9, p. 912. Chicago:

Encyclopaedia Britannica. 2 Muslim Peoples: A World Ethnographic Survey (1978). Vol. 9, p. 785. Westport: Greenwood Press. 3 J, II. Pearson (1970). Orientalist libraries today. ht. Libr. Rev. 2, 13. 4 Mumtaz A. Anwar (1983). Towards a universal bibliographic system for Islamic literature. ht.

Llhr. Keo. 15, 257 261.

OO’LO- 7837/85/040357+ 14$03.00/O Q 1985 Academic Press Inc. (London) Limited

358 r\. Sh’I‘I‘AR ;\NI) S. III REHMAN

in Islam and Muslims, remains uncovered. Lack of pertinent studies indicates that most of the countries in the Muslim world are not even aware of the extent and degree of coverage of their information in the existing services on which they have to depend.

‘1’0 improve the dissemination of information, accessibility to the Islamic literature needs to be improved. For this purpose, it seems imperative to survey systematically the present bibliographic coverage in the available sources in the first place. After having identified the inadequacies, ways and means for developing sound bibliographic apparatus for Islamic literature could be explored. Hence there is a need to evaluate the major indexing and abstracting services which claim to cover Islamic literature. In this evaluation process a detailed and comprehensive analysis of coverage of Islamic literature is the first logical step.

This study, therefore, attempts to assess the degree of bibliographical control of Islamic literature in selected indexing services. The coverage provided by four Western indexing services has been evaluated using the bibliographical checking method.

The evaluation of indexing services has been quite commonplace in library literature. Some interesting studies of printed indexes compared the coverage of different indexing and abstracting services in particular fields and disciplines. Studies of Davison and Matthews,’ Carroll,2 and Bourne3 have been significant for comparative evaluation of the printed indexing services of the literature of chemistry and spectroscopy, virology, and agriculture respectively. Elliott, in an identical study, compared Psychological Abstracts with Bulletin Signaldique on the basis of coverage, number and subject distribution of subjects, and publication delay.4 There are many more studies but the emphasis has been shifted to the coverage of online services. Most of these studies are in the field of science and technology.

For social sciences and humanities in general, and the disciplines of religion and theology in particular, there is a dearth of such studies. No’ study on the evaluation of bibliographical coverage for Islamic literature could be identified either in Western countries or in the

’ I’. S. Davison and D. A. R. Matthews (1969). Assessment ofinformation services. Aslib PTOC. 21, 28&283.

* L. H. Carroll (1969). An analytical survey ofvirology literature in two announcementjournals. Am. DOG. 20,234-237.

3C. P. Bourne (1977). Overlapping coverage of bibliography of agriculture by 15 other secondary sources. In The Measurement and Ermluation qfLibrary Services (F. W. Lancaster, ed.), p. 163. Virginia: Information Resources Press.

4C. K. Elliott (1969). Abstracting services in psychology: a comparison of Psychological Abstracts and Bulletin Signaletique. Lihr. .4x5. Rec. 71, 279-280.

INDEXING OF ISLAMIC LITERATURE 359

Muslim world, though there are some studies available on the general situation of bibliographical control of literature in Muslim countries.

DEFINITIONS

For the purpose of this study the term Islamic literature has been used for documents generated in Muslim countries or about Muslim countries in other parts of the Muslim world. Its scope is broad enough to include social, political, economic, and religious literature as well as area studies, which embrace a variety ofgeopolitical and socio-linguistic aspects.

In this study a country has been considered Muslim when more than filiy per cent of its population is Muslim. A recent survey published in the United States reports seventy-seven such countries.’ In the context of this paper, bibliographical control refers to the listing or indexing activities of “accessing” services. The terms bibliographical control and coverage have been used interchangeably. Likewise, the terms “re- fcrences” and “citations” have also been used interchangeably and they simply refer to a bibliographical entry selected for the purpose of search and comparison in the indexing services.

METHODOLOGY

The bibliographical checking method was employed to conduct this study. Three hundred bibliographical references comprised the basic database for comparison of coverage in the four selected indexing services. These references were drawn from three different journals. These journals covered three varied disciplines and are published in three different Muslim countries. The selection ofjournals was a difficult step in this study. No comprehensive list or bibliography is available from which one can identify the research journals published in the Muslim world. The only available source is the accession lists published by the Library of Congress Procurement Offices in some of the countries in the Muslim world. Most of the journals included in these accession lists were not available in the Indiana University Libraries where this study was conducted. The journals were selected from the Muslim countries, despite realization of the fact that non-Muslim countries, especially occidental countries, are producing a major part of the Islamic literature. It was assumed this literature had better biblio- graphical control than that from Muslim countries. Despite these

1 .4n f3imate ofthe Muslzm Population qfthe World ( 1980), p. 8. Plainfield, Indiana: North American Idamic Trust.

360 A. SAT’I‘AR AND S. UT REHMAN

elforts, 69.7% of the references in the sample turned out to be from the literature published in non-Muslim countries. Journals were chosen from three countries: Nigeria, Malaysia, and Pakistan. These countries are situated in three major concentrations of the Muslim states. Furthermore, these countries have a sizeable publication rate in the English language to which this study was limited. Another major consideration was to represent disciplines in which the literature is being produced at a faster pace, and that constitute major areas of the modern Islamic literature. The journals are in the fields of economics, area studies, and religion. Area studies have been defined as having quite a broad scope in this study so as to include cultural, geographical, sociological, and language literature. The religious literature covers all the traditional boundaries of Islam as a religion, which is concerned with an individual’s personal and collective life with its legal, political, civilizational, and historical ingredients.

An effort was made to obtain a reasonably adequate sample of the references. The number was, however, kept at a total of 300 references because of the time consuming efforts of manual searching of these references in the entire files of four indexing services. Determining the place of publication of each reference was also a difficult task. Periodical directories were helpful for the references pertaining to journals but experts had to be consulted to determine the origin of many of the non- journal references. Because of time constraints, further analysis about the origin of the references and location of the authors had to be abandoned. In some cases this type of analysis becomes very important. Sometimes place of publication does not really indicate the origin of the work. It should be noted that just because a paper is published in a Westernjournal does not imply that the authors are necessarily Western as the journals accept worthy papers witho.ut giving consideration to the author’s location.

Three journals were selected for the sample: ODU, A Journal of West African Studies published twice a year by the University of Ife, Nigeria, Kajian Economic Malaysia (Journal of the Malaysian Economic Associ- ation) published by the Faculty of Economics and Administra- tion, University of Malaya, Malaysia, and Islamic Studies, a quarterly research journal ofthe Islamic Research Institute, Islamabad, Pakistan.

One hundred references were taken from each of these journals. References from the end notes of the articles were taken starting from the latest issue of the 1980 volume and going back to the earlier numbers and volumes until the requisite number was reached. The requisite number of references fell within the time span of 1975 through 1980. References to monographs, newspapers, dissertations, government documents and archives were excluded because some of the services

INDEXING OF ISLAMIC L.ITEK.4TUKE 361

selected do not cover these types of materials. References selected were then categorized into these groups: journal citations, conference papers and proceedings references, and report literature references. Each reference was recorded on a separate card to have the database flexible enough for sorting, matching, and mutual comparison across various variables.

Four indexing services were evaluated in the study: Social Sciences C’itation Index (SSCI) , So&l Sciences Index f SI j , Humanities Index (HI’), and Ir&x /&z&us (II). SSCI is produced by the Institute for Scientihc Information and has international coverage in the area of social sc,icnccs. SI and HI arc products of the H. IV. PVilson Company, ant1 they complement each other in coverage. Index Islamicu.r, published by Manse11 and compiled under the auspices of the Royal Academy for Islamic Civilization Research (Al Albait Foundation). 1Zmman, claims to cover the Islamic literature exclusively. These services were con- sidered appropriate for evaluation of the coverage of Islamic literature ljrcause of their international scope, multidisciplinary approach, and their coverage of multi-form materials. ‘Ihcre are many other indexes and abstracts that could also be selected for this study but the time constraints restricted their inclusion. Art.s and Humanities Citation Index was one possible service butt it was excluded because of the apparent slant of the literature in thr sample toward the field of social sciences.

LIMITATIONS

The exposure of the researchers to the Islamic literature led to the assumption that a major bulk of the contemporary Islamic literature is being produced in English. Considering this assumption and other limitations, the sample for this study is taken from the English language literature.

Selection ofjournals for obtaining the sample was hampered by the necessity of selecting only those journals which were available in Indiana University Libraries at Bloomington because all the manual searching was done at that campus. ‘I’he sample of the study does not completely cover the domain of Islamic literature due to the bias of the ,journals in certain fields. The sample mainly comprises references from the fields of economics, area studies, and religion. These disciplines, however, are considered to be the most rapidly growing segments of the literature.

This evaluation is limited to the coverage factor. Use patterns, overlap, and some other important aspects could not be addressed due to the researchers’ limitations. Had time and resources allowed, analyses

362 A. SA'I'TAK ANU S. UT KEHMAN

of the origin of the work and location of author, relationship of location of author to indexing coverage, etc. were also desirable.

As mentioned earlier, evaluation of coverage remained restricted to four indexing services. Among these selected services, only three types of materials, i.e., journals, papers and proceedings, and reports were included in the sample. Many other indexing services, which also claim to cover Islamic literature, could not be included in this evaluation study mainly because of limitations of time and available resources.

CHARACTERISTICS OF THE LITERATURE

The references included in the sample were analysed to ascertain the prevalent characteristics of the cited literature. This analysis by type of material, subject, and place of publication formed the foundation for further comparison. The analysis, however, is limited to the salient features only, and was not intended as citation analysis or bibliometric study. The sample characteristics have been shown in Tables I and II.

As shown in Table I, most of the references cite the literature of non- Muslim countries (69.7%), whereas references to the Muslim world

TABLE I

Type of publication

Characteristics of sample literature

Type of material

Journals Conf. papers Reports

Total references

No. “i,

Non-Muslim countries USA UK Australia Netherlands Others Total

Muslim countries Nigeria Pakistan Malaysia Turkey Others Total

112 49 11 8

12 192

21 21 16 6 I

65

9 3

1 4

17

8 3 3

2 16

121 40.4 52 17.3 11 3.7 9 3.0

- 16 5.3 209 69.7

6 35 11.7 2 26 8.6 2 21 7.0

6 2.0 3 I.0

10 91 30.3

Grand total 257 300 100.0 (85*7%) (3&)

INDEXING OF ISLAMIC LITERATURE 363

literature are only 30.3 %, even though the references were drawn from the journals published in the Muslim countries. Among the non-Muslim countries, 12 1 out of 20 1 references are from the United States only. The British literature is the second most cited category. Among the Muslim countries, most of the references were Nigerian and Pakistani publi- cations, which constitute 38.5% and 28.6% respectively of the re- fi-rences. The major portion of the Nigerian references is in area studies whereas most ofthe Pakistani references are from the religious literature. One of the reasons might be that the journals from which the sample was drawn from these countries specialized in these fields.

Most of these references (85.7%) are from the journal literature. Papers and conference proceedings, and report literature have the ratio of 11% and 3.3% respectively. Regarding the subject proportions, the sample contains 44% entries for economics, 41% for area studies, and 15% for religious literature.

BIBLIOGRAPHIC COVERAGE OF I,ITERATURE

References selected for the sample were searched in four indexing services. More than one-third references (37.5%) were not covered by any of the selected indexing services. In case of literature from the Muslim countries, 66.1% of the references from this sample were not covered in any of the indexes searched. These data were then analysed further for the coverage of the Islamic literature by type of material, subject, and country. Tables III-V give a picture of comparative coverage of these references across these elements. Analyses for coverage

TABLE II

Samplesummary (N= 300)

Element Percentage of references

Type of material Journals Conference papers and proceedings Reports

Place of publication Muslim countries Non-Muslim countries

Subject Area studies Economics Religion

85.7 11.0 3.3

30.3 69.7

41.0 44.0 15.0

364 A. SATTAR AND S. UT REHMAN

‘I-ABLE III

Coverage by Qpe of material (N = 187)

Percentage

Type of material SSCI SIlHI II Total coverage

Journals Papers and proceedings Reports

‘I’otal coverage

53.3 44.5 21.7 59.1 9.0 3.0 10.3

10.0 10.0 10.0 ~-~

62.2 38.5 24.5 62.5

by type of material, subject, and coverage of literature by country (Tables III-V) are based on 187 references located in four indexing services. All the percentages in these tables and the relevant discussions correspond to these identified references. Likewise, Tables VI--VIII provide analysis for the coverage of each of these indexing services. This analysis is also based on the same number of references (187) located in the four indexing services. In further discussions Social Sciences Index and Humanities Index will be referred to as one indexing service because of their complementary character.

Coverage of Literature by Type of Material As shown in Table III, journal literature is better covered than non- journal literature. As a whole, 59.1% of the journal literature references were covered by these services, whereas for reference from papers and proceedings, and report literature, the coverage is 10.3% and 10% respectively. The coverage of journal literature in SSCI is 53*3%, covering only 10% of the report literature and 9% ofthe references from papers and conference proceedings. SI/HI covered 44.5% of the journal

Subject

TABLE IV

Coverage by subject

Percentage

SSCI SI/HI II Total percentage

Area studies 39.0 47.0 22.0 49.0 Economics 71.0 25.0 19.0 73.0 Religion 22.0 13.0 62.0 63.0

INDEXING OF ISLAMIC LITERATURE: 365

TABLE V

Coverage by country (JV = 187)

Mrihlim countries Nigeria Pakistan .\4alaysia ‘I‘UdX) Otllrrs Total

Non-14uslirn countrirs 17S11 C’K Australia Netherlands Otllcrs ‘Total

Pcrccntagc

Sl/ HI II

19.0 00.0 9.5 22.2 9.5 00.0 71.4 72.3

50.0 00.0 12.5 57.9 00.0 00.0 504 50.0 00.0 004 00~0 00.0 21.5 004 33.8 33.9

83.9 64.2 15.2 85.2 61.2 36.7 38.8 68.0 90.9 00.0 9.1 95.0

100.0 100.0 00.0 100.0 19.0 8.3 33.3 43.0 76.0 51.6 21.4 77.5

articles but none ofthe references for papers and proceedings, and report literature was covered by this service. Index Islamicus covered 21.7% of the journal references, 10% of the report literature, and 3% of the references for papers and proceedings. This inadequate coverage seems to br contrary to the claims of the indexing service for exclusive coverage of Islamic literature and inclusion of conferences and congresses and other types of materials.

(,hverage of Literature by Sukject A comparison of the four services was made to assess their coverage of different subjects. The sample was categorized into three fields, i.e., area studies, economics, and religion. Table IV reveals that references to the economic literature are better covered as 73% of the references relating to economics in this sample are covered by these indexing services. For religion and area studies, the coverage has been found to be 63% and 49% respectively. Individually these services have different emphases for covering literature of different subjects. SSCI covered 71% of the economic literature, whereas Index Islamicus covered only 19% of this ty.pe ofliterature. It has better coverage for religious literature, i.e. 62%. S//HZ have the poorest coverage of the religious literature, as only 13% of the references relating to religion from this sample were covered by this service.

366 A. SATTAR AND S. LIT REHMAN

Cbveruge oj‘I.iterature by Country Seventy-seven per cent of the references to the literature produced in the non-Muslim countries were covered by the indexes selected for this study. For the literature produced in the Muslim countries, the coverage, however, is inadequate. As shown in Table V, these services covered only 33.9’/0 of the literature from the Muslim countries. This shows that coverage of the Islamic literature as a whole in these services is weak. Among the non-Muslim countries, the coverage for the United States literature is 85.2% and it is 68% in the United Kingdom. For individual Muslim countries, 72.3% of the references from Pakistan and 57.9% from Malaysia have been covered by these services.

SSCZ covered 76% of the non-Muslim literature references, S1/H1 covered 5 1.6%, whereas Index Islamicus covered only 2 1.4% of the references from non-Muslim countries. Comparatively, coverage of literature from the Muslim world is higher in Index Islamicus, though it covered only 33.8% of these references. SSCZcovered 21.5% while none of the references from the Muslim countries was covered by SI/HZ services. With regard to coverage for literature from individual Muslim countries, it was found that in the case of Malaysia SSCI covered 50% of the references. It might be because of the fact that 56% of the references of the journal articles from this country are in the field of economics. Pakistan and ‘Turkey are comparatively better covered in Index Islamicus. This service covered 7 1.4% and 50% of the references from these countries. However, it should not be considered an indication of the adequacy of coverage of literature from these countries. Analysis of the sample shows that most of the references from these countries are in the field of religion and theology, towards which the Index Islamicus seems to be biased. Therefore, coverage for these countries in Index Islamicus looks better.

C~VERACE OF LITERATURE BY INDIVIDUAL INDEXING SERVICES

Tables VI-VIII describe the coverage of the Islamic literature in individual indexing services in comparative terms. SSCI has the best coverage for this literature. Almost 62.2% of the literature is covered in this service. SI/HI services covered 38*5%, and Index Islamicus covered only 24.5% of the references from the sample. The coverage of SSCI for religious literature and the literature produced in the Muslim world is comparatively weak. Likewise, though the coverage provided by Index Islamicus is inadequate as a whole, it might have covered most of the unique references, which might be more important to the scholars

INDEXING OF ISLAMIC LITERATURE: 367

interested in Islam as its coverage is higher for the literature produced in the Muslim world and for religious literature. Details about the coverage of individual indexes are given below.

Social Sciences Citation Index SSCI covered 62.2% of the references from this sample as a whole. As shown in ‘Table V, SSCI covered 76% of these refercnccs from the non- Muslim countries and 2 1.5% from the Muslim countries. Table VI gives details about its coverage and its emphasis for different subject fields. Among the Muslim countries, 75% of the covered literature of Nigeria is in area studies, and 100% of the referc=nces from Pakistani and Malaysian literature in thr field of economics have been covered.

For non-Muslim countries, this service has emphasis in the areas of economics as well. Seventy-two per cent ofthe United States literature is that of economics. SSCI has a better coverage of area studies for the United Kingdom literature. SSCI has weak coverage for religious literature. The reason is evident that its emphasis is on social science literature instead of the humanities.

Serial Sciences Index and Humanities Index Table VII shows coverage of the Islamic literature in SI/HI. Literature ofthr Muslim countries is not adequately covered in these services. None

TABLE VI

Coverage in SSCZ (JV = 187)

Country Area studies Economics Religion

Muslim countries Nigeria Pakistan Malaysia Turkey 0t11crs

Nnn-Muslim countries USA UK Australia Netherlands Others

75.0 25.0 100.0

- 100.0 -. -

23.4 71.2 5.3 66.7 26.7 6.6

90.0 10.0 - 100.0 00.0 - 50.0 50.0

368 A. SA’I”T.4R AND S. UT REHMAN

-I‘ABI,E VII

Coverage in SSIjHI (N = 287)

Country Area studies

Percentage

Economics

.__--

Religion

Muslim countries

Non-Muslim countries USA UK Netherlands Others

00.0 00.0 00.0

25.0 68.0 7.0 72.2 22.2 56

100.0 00.0 100.0

of the references from the Muslim countries was found in these indexes. For the literature of the non-Muslim countries, these services are strong in the field of area studies as they covered 72.2% of the area studies literature from United Kingdom, whereas in the case of the United States, its coverage was found higher for economics, i.e., 68%. Coverage for religious literature in S1/HI is inadequate for all the countries. As a whole, it covered 38.5% of the references.

Index Islamicus As shown in Table V, Index Islamicus covered 24.5% of the references. Its coverage for the references relating to religion was 62%. Table VIII gives a description of the coverage of literature in Index Islamicus. This service claims an international and multi-disciplinary scope. Analysis of its coverage, on the basis of the sample for this study, reveals that its emphasis is on the humanities in general and on religion in particular. It covered 33.8% of the references from the Muslim countries and 2 1.4% from the non-Muslim countries. Its coverage for non-Muslim countries is higher for area studies as 43.8% of the United States literature covered was in area studies as it was 79% of the United Kingdom literature. For Muslim countries its emphasis is on religious literature. It covered 100% of the religious literature from Pakistan. It did not cover any references in the field of economics from any of the Muslim countries. One of the reasons might be that according to the decisions of the editorial staff of this service, the references to the economics literature, have not touched the religious aspects and, therefore, remained beyond the focus of this service.

INDEXING OF ISLAMIC LITERATURE 369

CONCLUSIONS AND RECOMMENDATIONS

The results show that 37.5% of the sample was not covered by any of the indexing services searched. Social Sciences Citation Index (SSCI) , Social Sciences Index and Humanities Index (U/HI), and Index Islamicus (II) covered 62.2, 38.5, and 24.5% of the references respectively. These percentages refer to the number of the identified responses in these indexing services. Social Sciences Citation Index is comparatively better than the others for the overall coverage of the Islamic literature, though its coverage for the literature produced in the Muslim world and religious literature is weak. As a whole, coverage of the Islamic literature in these major indexing services is inadequate and unsatisfactory, in so far as almost 38% of the references have not been covered anywhere. Coverage for the literature produced in the Muslim countries is especially weak as 66.1% of this literature has not been covered by any of these indexing services. Even Index Islamicus, which aims at concentrat- ing on the Islamic literature exclusively, has inadequate coverage for the literature from the Muslim world. Though in comparative terms Index Islamicus is the strongest service but it covcrcd only 33.8% references from the literature in the Muslim world.

The information specialists and scholars in the Muslim countries must be conscious of the fact that none of the major indexing services adequately covers this field, and they might have to consult other sources to get satisfactory results in their literature searches. 5’SC1, which

‘TABLE VIII

Coverage in Index Islamicus (.N = 187)

Percentage

Country

h4uslim countries Nigeria Pakistan Malaysia Turkey Others

Area studies

50.0

50.0 15.0

Economics Religion

- 50.0 100.0 50.0 30.0

Non-Muslim countries USA UK Australia Others

43.8 25.0 31.2 79.0 5.2 15.8 00.0 100.0 50.0 50.0

370 r\. SATTAR AND S. ur REHMAN

is comparatively better for overall coverage, may not include some unique items as its coverage is weak for the literature produced in the Muslim countries and religious literature. Index Islamicus which is better for the literature produced in the Muslim countries is, however, weak for overall coverage of Islamic literature. Among the covered literature, journal articles were better covered than non-journal articles. Social Sciences Index and Humanities Index do not appear to cover papers and proceedings, and report literature at all. Index Islamicus is also in- adequate in covering the non-journal materials.

All services seem to have specialized emphases in their declared fields. Social Sciences Citation Index has the best coverage in economics, Social Sciences Index and Humanities Index in area studies, and Index Islamicus in religion. Overall, economics was found better covered than area studies and religion in this study. Coverage of economics is poor in Index Islamicus, though it claims an interdisciplinary approach.

The indexing services under study seem to have the objectives of meeting the needs of the Western researcher. Their policies and scope are being determined by their immediate clientele. These services should not be expected to provide comprehensive coverage for Islamic literature. The scholars and information agencies of the Muslim countries have little influence on their policies of coverage. It seems appropriate to look for ways and means to develop a sound and comprehensive indexing service or bibliographic database for Islamic literature that would cater to the information needs of the scholars in Islamic studies and the Muslim world. Establishment ofa World Islamic Bibliographic Center was suggested at the First Conference of Muslim Librarians and Information Scientists. l If such a scheme materializes, one of the major functions should be to establish such an indexing service or database.

Another possibility, as suggested by Anwar, is to take over the Index Islamicus and expand its service to include all types of materials and literature from all over the world .* It is also necessary that the governments in the Muslim countries be persuaded to start indexing services in their own countries to make them an integral part of the broader information infrastructure.

1 First Conference of Muslim Librarians and Information Scientists (1982). Recommendations, p. 2. Unpublished manuscript.

2 Mumtaz A. Anwar (1983) op. cit., p. 259.