Tehran Times � The Iran National Library and Archives (INLA) plans to introduce digital library technologies and startups active in this field in the near future, Shanbepress reported on Tuesday.

The INLA, as the biggest database in Iran, held a one-week entrepreneurship event, during which it called entrepreneurs and startup owners and Artificial Intelligence (AI) experts to use the INLA resources for emerging businesses and also meet the needs of the library.

Library expansion needs increasing capacities and human resources who have applicable knowledge, the INLA head Ashraf Boroujerdi said on Tuesday.

Several workshops on big data management, deep learning, data visualization, pattern recognition, recommendation system, social network analysis, name entity recognition and blockchain were held on the sidelines of the event.

The automatic processing for listing new books, collecting Persian web data, using new technologies for preservation of digital data, improvement of searching methods, co-founding for data collection and digitalization of resources at the library were also discussed during the event.

There is a great amount of data collected in the national library, which can be used by startups, Boroujerdi said.

Meanwhile, INLA and the vice presidency for science and technology signed an agreement to establish an accelerator center in the field of librarianship and digital archive.

According to businessnewsdaily, libraries have proprietary information and access to the 'hidden Web,' which gives a competitive advantage to tech entrepreneurs.

The 'hidden' or Deep Web refers to the vast amount of information and data that is unavailable on the open Web, and can only be accessed through special software or internal networks, such as those used by libraries. This can include proprietary government data, in-depth research articles and analytics tools for otherwise useless raw data.