About the Collection
The Middle East Water Collection provides access to roughly 9000 items on the subjects of politics and water in the Middle East. Materials include books, journal and newspaper articles, and documents published in the Middle East, Europe, and North America originating from a variety of publishers and national and multinational agencies and organizations.
Materials in the public domain are available in full text from this website. More materials from the original collection will be added online as copyright permissions are granted. This website may be used as a search interface for the complete collection of M|E Water materials housed on the 3rd floor of the Valley Library.
Users may search or browse the collection using the menu on the left.
Tribute to Dr. Thomas Naff
Thomas Naff is Professor Emeritus of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies at the University of Pennsylvania. After receiving advanced degrees at the School of Oriental and African Studies of the University of London and at the University of California at Berkeley, Prof. Naff taught at the American University at Cairo, where he was the co-founder of the Center for Arabic Studies Abroad (CASA). He then became the Director of the Middle East Center at the University of Pennsylvania, and later founder and director of Penn's Middle East Research Institute which later became the Middle East Water Information Network and finally, the IES Water Resources Database.
In his decades at the University of Pennsylvania, Prof. Naff has taught, published, and lectured on a wide range of Middle Eastern subjects, covering the period from the advent of Islam to the present day. He pioneered study of the interaction of water resources and political decision-making with his landmark book, Water in the Middle East, co-authored with Ruth Matson in 1984, in addition to dozens of other seminal articles on the topic.
The Middle East Research Institute (MERI) is a unit of the University of Pennsylvania that brings together American and Middle Eastern academics and non-academics from a broad variety of fields and backgrounds. Its staff, Fellows, and Associates, represent a productive mixture of professionals with extensive and varied experience in the Middle East. One of the Institute's major contributions to applied research and knowledge is Prof. Naff's creation of the Middle East Water Information Network (MEWIN) and the IES Water Resources Database. Its collection is one of the world's most extensive resources for water-related information on the contemporary Middle East. In 2007, Oregon State University was privileged to be asked to host Prof. Naff's comprehensive life's work at our facility.
