The Aga Khan Library holds over 52,000 volumes focusing on Muslim civilisations, past and present, and Muslim diasporas around the world, as well as in a broad range of research topics. An exceptional feature of the collection is its focus on the study of Muslim minorities, with particular emphasis on the Shia, in general, and the Ismaili, in particular; and the presence of materials in multiple languages not common in other academic libraries.
The Library is continuously growing its funds both in print and electronic format; the electronic collection includes over 84,000 titles. To facilitate access to thousands of rare materials on its shelves, the Library developed the Aga Khan Library Digital Collections platform; an open access tool that includes digital copies of many of its manuscripts, artworks, out-of-print publications, photographs, and maps produced in different periods and areas of the Muslim world.
The Library's collections also include documentaries and feature films covering a wide range of themes and regions of the Muslim world, and a unique collection of audio recordings of Qawwali, Gnawa and Sufi music.
To facilitate access to materials not available in the collection, the Library became a member of Jisc Library Hub Discover, a network of academic and research libraries in the United Kingdom and Ireland; and through its partnership with OCLC, has made its holdings available in WorldCat, an international library catalogue. These connections allow the library to place interlibrary loans to request materials from other libraries in universities and research institutions all over the world.
The Library offers information literacy workshops to facilitate access to the resources in the collection, but also on research strategies, reference management software use, and plagiarism and copyright issues. The Library is involved in the provision of publication impact analysis and bibliometric services to the Aga Khan University's Institute for the Study of Muslim Civilisations and can extend those services to individual researchers.
