About MERJ: Middle East Research Journals Project

The Middle East Research Journals (MERJ) project, funded by a grant from the Institute of Museum and Library Services (2002-2006), is an offshoot of a larger collaborative undertaking, the Digital Library for International Research (DLIR, formerly American Overseas Digital Library (AODL), launched by the Council of American Overseas Research Centers (CAORC) and its member centers in 1999.

The MERJ project provides free access to the following components:

• a survey of journals at seven American Overseas Research Centers in the Middle East
  • American Research Institute in Turkey (libraries in Ankara and Istanbul)
  • American Institute for Maghrib Studies (libraries in Morocco and Tunisia)
  • American Institute for Yemeni Studies
  • American Research Center in Egypt
  • American Center of Oriental Research in Amman, Jordan
  • W.F. Albright Institute of Archaeological Research in Jerusalem
  • Cyprus American Archaeological Research Institute


• cataloging of over 2,000 Middle Eastern journals titles in various languages (including four non-Roman script languages: Arabic, Greek, Hebrew, and Ottoman Turkish) from their nine library collections


• selected preservation microfilming


• selected article-level indexing


• selected digitization and web access to full journals.

These institutions hold many journals that are rare, important, and currently seriously underused because of their bibliographic and physical inaccessibility. It is our goal to serve scholars focused on many academic endeavors and to bring vital yet inaccessible material to a public audience in the United States to broaden its knowledge and understanding of the Middle East and Islamic world.