BACKGROUND
There are two problems that this project addresses:
the first problem is the scarce resources to the Palestinian academic institutions. The libraries in most Palestinian universities are modest and have a limited number of sources, such as books and e-books, which hinders the research wheel for most of the students and academics in these universities.
In addition, some universities have better resources than others; therefore, students find books in another university library than the university they are registered in, but they cannot actually borrow these books or have physical access to it due to the geographical disconnected areas in Palestine.
The second problem is that Palestine doesn't have a unified portal of research that includes all the research produced by the Palestinian researches in the West Bank and Gaza. Such issue has its bad influence on having access to research results and sometimes wasting money and time by reproducing the same studies without actually knowing that another research was conducted in another place.
Conducting high quality research that has real benefits on the ground is a priority for the universities and academic communities. Research actually elevates universities to higher ranks and help in building better communities and society. Thus, it is considered a priority for universities, locally and globally.
For Palestinian universities, having political restrictions on the ground that prevent geographical access among the Palestinian academics and students in the universities of the two sides of the country, makes this project a necessity and a must-do in the plans of development for Palestinian universities.
The idea of the project came when the new head and assistant at the UCAS Scientific Research and Library Department took their positions. As they both studied for their graduate degrees abroad, they noticed the huge difference between the library services and research portals that the universities outside Palestine offer.
Then, they started looking if the same issue applies to other local universities or not, and the result was similar to the case of UCAS. Thus, the idea of the project came in order to solve this issue and elevate the level of services and resources of the libraries and provide better access to research.