The corpus of modern Arabic literature, spanning from the aftermath of World War II to the present day, is dispersed throughout the digital realm and sequestered away in the basements of libraries on paper files. Unfortunately, there exists no comprehensive registry of the literary works, both original and translated, that are published annually. This website is an attempt to remedy this gap.

The creation of this database serves as a solution to the various issues encountered in cataloging modern Arabic literature in libraries and highlights the ongoing disconnection between the field of modern Arabic literature and the Digital Humanities. The library catalogs of Arabic literature have been observed to have a host of shortcomings, including lack of comprehensive information, inaccuracies, and outdated records, which this database aims to address.

The decentralized nature of Arabic literature is in part due to the limitations of catalogers who possess insufficient linguistic knowledge. This lack of expertise results in the creation of multiple versions of records within centralized library catalog systems, resulting in a lack of accuracy and completeness. Furthermore, it leads to the omission of a significant number of original Arabic literature works held in various institutions, as they are not properly cataloged and recorded in these systems. This highlights the importance of having catalogers with specialized linguistic knowledge and training to ensure that the Arabic literature corpus is properly cataloged and made accessible to researchers and readers.

Initial estimates of the number of titles translated from Arabic to English using WorldCat were 5,000, but after a comprehensive search, it was determined that there are only 1,000 titles from 1980 onward. This discrepancy is caused by WorldCat returning results in other languages and works that were not translated. Additional methods such as manually reviewing releases from major publishers and prizes, going through numerous archives, and reviewing works of major authors and translators were used to rectify this problem and uncover more titles.