The Aligarh Muslim University was established as a Central University by an Act of Parliament in 1920. It is one of the oldest and probably the biggest residential university in the country  of the 12 faculties, Faculty of Social Sciences being one of the biggest Faculty consists of 15 departments of studies with about 2700 students, 500 Research Scholars and 137 faculty members.

In 2013, the faculty under the leadership of Prof. Shabahat Husain, a Professor of Library & Information Science and the then Dean of the Faculty took a  pioneering step to establish   ‘Social Science Cyber Library’, which is first of its kind in the world. The cybrary was inaugurated by His Excellency Shri Pranab Mukherjee, the President of India on 27^th December, 2013. The library is aimed at providing access to the open access e-resources available in form of e-books, e-journals, in-house publications, web courses, video lectures of eminent scholars, web sites, Data bases, Subject Gateways and a host of softwares, pertaining to the Social Sciences. The cyber library is expected to serve the social scientists not only in AMU but also across the globe.  At present the usage of the cybrary is reported from 176 countries and itsdescription   may   be seen in Wikipedia as well.