INTRODUCTION
The Birzeit University PHOTO ARCHIVE is an offshoot of the Photographic Department of the Birzeit University Public Relations Office, which covers all major events in the university throughout the year. In addition, the archive covers political developments which affect the university. One example of this would be the unfortunately frequent Israeli closures of the area, which prevent the university community of around 5,000 people from reaching the campus. This took place continuously for two weeks in March 1996.



AIMS
The aims of the PHOTO ARCHIVE can be summarised as follows:

1. To provide an internationally-available, visual archive documenting the life of one community in the Palestinian West Bank, to provide additional context to the textual information distributed by the university through the Internet. URLs to relevant photographs in the archives will be added in university press releases and other publications. Relevant information contained in the university website will be linked to the appropriate images in the archive and vice versa.
   
   
2. To provide a way for both print media and human rights/activist publications to order photographs of major news events involving the university. See HOW TO ORDER PHOTOGRAPHS FROM THIS ARCHIVE for more information. NB: For news agencies that wish to set up an arrangement to receive our photographs via e-mail as events happen, please contact us for more details. We can send images, to compliment information from press releases, in a compressed high resolution format within several hours of a development, providing this pre-arrangement has been made.

Other Palestine-friendly organisations are welcome to download our higher resolution images without charge to illustrate and enhance their websites ON THE CONDITION THEY HAVE RECEIVED PERMISSION FROM THE BIRZEIT WEBMASTER FIRST. The Webmaster can be reached at webmaster@birzeit.edu.