Develop a stronger relationship with the Qatari community and expand our involvement with Qatar’s educational aspirations while being true to our mission, vision, and identity.
The Arab Mothers Association (AMA) generously made a 5,000 QR donation of Arabic language books for our Elementary and Middle School/High School library collections. These wonderful new titles show artists and authors who worked together to create beautiful books that reflect the Arab culture. Huda Almansoori, President of the AMA, hoped that many students would be excited about finding books in their language to take home and enjoy! The libraries are thrilled to have the new books in our collections for native speakers as well as our students studying Arabic.
Thanks to this donation and the advice of our Arab Mothers, we have been able to better develop our Arabic language collections for student and parent use.
The AMA also organized and hosted their first annual Arab language book sale. Books were available from a variety of high quality Arabic language book publishers. Arabic language students loved finding a beautiful new book in a familiar language. The sale was incredibly popular, and we thank the AMA for their support of reading and literature in our community.
From the MS faculty survey:
"Thanks for being so cooperative with adding an Arabic section to the library. Your help and work is highly appreciated :)"
Hena Khan's author visit was sponsored by Qatar Reads. She visited ASD, along with 4 other area schools.
The books she writes aim to educate children about Islam. For example, "Golden Domes and Silver Lanterns" and "Night of the Moon: A Ramadan Story". Her books have beautiful illustrations, and clear, easy to understand information. Our elementary students loved to see familiar images within Khan's books, learn more about their religion or the religion of friends, and hear her message of acceptance.
Gift of the Sands by Each year Grade 6 students and teachers celebrate Qatar History Day. This is a day filled with learning about the people of Qatar and its culture and traditions. We welcomed Dubai based author, Julia Johnson, to speak to our students, teachers and visitors about the history of pearl diving in this region. She presented historical artifacts, stories from the times and photographs to share the pearl diving experience.
Julia also shared with Grade 2 as they began their unit on Qatar. One teacher commented, "Julia is a lively, knowledgable, captivating presenter who enthralls young and old alike with her storytelling of the Arabian Gulf region."
The Pearl Diver by 
We continued our relationship with the Qatar National Library again this year, holding 3 registration sessions where over 100 ASD studens, parents, and teachers were able to register or renew their registrations. The QNL has a strong collection of online resources, and this year ASD and QNL reached and agreement that allows ASD students and teachers to access some of the QNL databases from campus (via IP address) for free. This agreement saves ASD money because we are now able to share resources (Scholastic Bookflix and SIRS Discoverer) that we previously subscribed to individually, and the number of SIRS searches increased from last year. Also, we are now able to access a huge database system - ProQuest - that has proven to be very popular with our students. We performed 754 Proquest Searches, and used over 1000 different articles as a result.
The ASD High School Library continued to enjoy an Inter-Library-Loan partnership with Georgetown School of Foreign Service Library in Qatar. This offers ASD students, particularly IB students, the opportunity to borrow books from the SFS Library for short term research assignments. We had several IB students this year take advantage of the partnership again this year.
Qatar Reads is a local organization with a focus to promote literacy and 21st centruy skills through the professional development of teachers in Qatar. Two of our librarians are members of the Qatar Reads executive board. This year over 300 teachers participated in the two Teachers Teaching Teachers professional development workshops. Author Hena Khan's visit to Doha was also sponsored by the organization.
We continued to build relationships this year with other local area school libraries and librarians. We hosted visiting librarians from Dhukan International School, Qatar International School and Step One International School. All four divisional librarians are also active members of a Qatar School Librarians group. This group hosts a rotating meeting, held at schools around Doha, where we meet to discuss issues relevant to librarianship in Qatar.