Publications from present day Middle Eastern countries, especially in the respective vernacular languages, are hardly represented at all. As a result, existing gaps are perpetuated and new ones continually formed. Priority is given to maintaining the existing base of serials and monographic series. Remaining funds, if any, are used to purchase monographs relevant to known research interests of the current faculty, meaning more attention is being paid to ancient Mesopotamia, Syria and Anatolia and less to ancient Egypt, Iran and Arabia. No new series have been started for a number of years, which greatly reduces the overall utility of collection since most important new research in this field is published as part of series, either monographic series or archaeological excavation reports.
Acquisitions are limited to materials in Western European languages.
Although some important material is published in Arabic, Turkish and Persian, especially reports of excavations by Middle Eastern archaeologists, it is considered of lower priority and almost never bought because it is sometimes difficult to obtain and relatively few Cornell users can read these languages. The collection covers all aspects of the civilizations of the non-Israelite Ancient Near East, from prehistoric times to , depending on the area, the Greek, Roman or Islamic conquest. Since most archaeological work, as well as the interpretation of the finds, has been done by West European and North American scholars, publication has also been centered there. In order of importance, Germany, France, Britain, Belgium, Italy, the Netherlands and the United States have been the leading centers of scholarly publication. Beyond that, there is modest activity in a few other countries, notably Japan and Australia.