"The Middle East collections at the Stanford University Libraries consist of nearly one million library items that come in the form of monographs, serials, manuscripts, lithographs, maps, films, photographs, video and audio tapes, DVDs, CD-ROMs, electronic resources, and streaming services. The collections support Stanford users’ learning, research, and teaching in history, literature, language, religion, philosophy, art history, international relations, anthropology, archaeology, music, and film. The collection covers print and non-print materials in the principal languages of the Middle East—Arabic, Persian, and Turkish–and those produced in other languages in North America, Europe, and elsewhere."

Shamaa provides specialists and stakeholders free internet access to the educational studies produced in the Arab countries, as well as those available through international organizations with whom Shamaa has concluded cooperation agreements. Shamaa also welcomes submissions by researchers on education in the Arab countries produced worldwide. It indexes peer-refereed articles, Master theses and PhD dissertations, books, reports and conference proceedings dated 2007 onward in Arabic, English and French. The database includes bibliographic information, abstracts and, when available, the full text of educational studies.