Intercultural Cooperation of National Libraries: A Case Study of ECO National Libraries

ECO countries are considerably close in geographical and cultural terms. This significant relationship originates from religious beliefs although there are different nationalities and racial groups in this region. The historical and cultural ties originate from the last centuries of Muslim rule in Central Asia and Caucasus. That is why Eco countries have cultural and literal works in common like old Qur'ans, Divan Hafez, Golestan Sa'di, rare copies of Shahnameh and other historical resources. In addition there are some commonalities in art, handcrafts, language, literature, poetry and prose. These common backgrounds in the region indicate living symbols and evidence of a similar history and life. National libraries are responsible for preservation of documentary heritage of the country. If we provide an effective way of cooperation of national libraries then we will gather the resources together and a wealth of valuable historical and cultural collections will be revived .this paper methodology is library research. Findings showed Eco countries have necessary requirements for an intercultural relationship. They have similarity with speaking and writing, religion, works and common resources. Results showed that eco countries have a population of 460 million people of which 90% are Muslim and Islam as the dominant religion in the countries is accepted. For better cooperation among the national libraries a union called EFLA has been established consisting of heads of ECO National Libraries and Archives. In this paper some suggestions presented so as to further cooperation of Eco national libraries. E.g. designing multilingual databases with cooperation of special work groups with presence of experts of members, multilingual catalogues and bibliographies, standard abstracts, exchanging experiences about preservation and maintenance of resources, holding courses about restoration of old manuscripts by countries which have better equipments in this field, provision of digital copies of manuscripts and storing them in a database etc.