Introduction The answer to the question of what a database is and what is its relevance to the scientific research is not easy. We may not be wrong if we say that it is, basically, a kind of information resource, often incomparably richer than it is, for example, a single book or magazine. Discussion and conclusion As a form of storing and retrieval of the knowledge, appeared in the information age, which we’ve just participated and witnesses. In it, thanks to the technical possibilities of information networks, it can be searched for a number of more or less relevant information, and that scientific and profound content. Databases are divided into: bibliographic databases, citation databases and databases containing full-text. In the paper are shortly presented most important on-line databases with their web site links. Thanks to those online databases scientific knowledge is spreading much more easy and useful.

Islamic manuscript books had an over-eminent role in the spreading of literacy and dissemination of knowledge of Islamic provenance in Bosnia and Herzegovina not only among ulemah circles but rather among ordinary people in general. Those facts are proved by several thousands of such books which are preserved in national and foreign collections, most famous among them being preserved in Gazy Husrev-bey’s library in Sarajevo and Bašagić’s collection in Bratislava, Slovakia. Authentic evidence of the possession and use of Islamic manuscripts in Bosnia and Herzegovina during Ottoman Empire, which ended in 1878, are comprised in sijjils of shariah law. Sijjyl is a collection of court records of certain territorial-administrative area which resulted out of a professional judicial practice in a certain time period. These documents are peculiar civilization registers whose content includes various topics – currently unavoidable study of political, economic, social and cultural history of a town or a wider region. The above mentioned facts suggest the importance of the catalogues of Islamic manuscripts and archive registers dating from Ottoman-empire period in Bosnia and Herzegovina.

This paper examines the establishment in 1945 of the National and Univer¬sity Library of Bosnia and Herzegovina in Sarajevo. It also examines the various stages through which the Library has passed, until its fatal destruction during bombardment in August 1992. Its remarkable recovery as an institution was not followed by the quick reconstruction of the old Library building, which will take some years to realize. Lastly, there is a discussion of typical activities performed by various departments of the Library including its future prospects.

The last decades of the twentieth century are witness of increased interest in the study of scientific heritage in the Islamic world. The already established opinion of Islamic science as only intermediary between classical Greece and Latin West is seriously challenged. The reason for this are original sources from which the historians of our century have extracted solid evidence of high level of originality achieved by Muslim scientists in the past. Through their work in Bagdad, Buhara, Samarkand, Reyy, Kairo, Maraga, Damascus, Kordova they have shown that Islamic sciences including medicine had theoretical and practical answers to the problems characteristic of their times. Throughout its History Bosnia and Herzegovina itself has been exposed to various cultural influences from the West as well as from the Islamic East. When we try to study the history of medicine and health profession generally, we have to take into account the early Arabic sources of which short survey is given in this paper. With this in mind, one can make one preliminary conclusion at least; Islamic medicine has reached respectable level of practical and theoretical achievements while the volume of books and number of people engaged in its practice produced series of biographies and bibliographies as clear proof of its growth and level it has attained.

At present the nargest collections of Islamic manuscripts ؛n Bosnla and Hercegovina are preseived in Gazi Husrevbeg Library and Oriental institute of Sarajevo (Ten and five thosand respectively). Considerably smaJler, but stil valuable, numter ofthese manuscripts are located in dte National and University Liberary and Historical Archives of Sarajevo. Until now these collection were only partialy catalogued and as such didn't serve their userswell.Due to this fact for sometime now the need was felt for devising ntles for Ibeir proper cataloguing in order to make them more accessable to the scientifircommunity.Taking into consideration the urgency ofthe matter, in this paper an attempt was made to present some practical solution to manysidcd problems involved in the cataloguing ofArabic manuscripts.

This paper concisely presents the results of the author's work regarding the question of the classification of literary \workis in the Arabic language.This classification hasn't been the object of special interest among experts in our country unti'l now. By means of surveying the historical development of classification in the Islamic scientific tradition it will be noticed that the philosophical systems of classification which vere created in Arabic by thinkers in past, haven't been sufficiently used in the process of adapting modem Westem systems of classification to the practical needs of Arabic library science. The enclosed table shows that the Dewey Decimal Classification system and the classifications of the Library of Congress are the most »hospitable« to the Arabic—Islamic literary inheritance. The Dewey Decimal Classification has been, perhaps as a result of this the most reprasented in the libraries of the contemporary Arabic world. Keeping in mind the scope of the manuscripts and prinited works in the Arabic language in our library collections, as well as the that that we are just facing the complex work concerninig the preparation of a catalogue of this material, it becames clear how much the subject of classification is relevant to be the object of consideration.