American Institute for Yemeni Studies (AIYS), Sana'a, Yemen

AIYS, the first foreign institute invited to initiate activities in Yemen, was founded in 1978 to promote pre- and post-doctoral research and scholarly and cultural exchange between the United States and Yemen. The only American interdisciplinary academic organization active on the Arabian Peninsula, AIYS has helped bring about a great expansion in the number of researchers interested in Yemen. Fields of research represented in Yemen through AIYS programs include a broad spectrum of disciplines in the humanities and social sciences, as well as selected sciences such as agronomy, botany, geology, and environmental studies. AIYS holds fellowship competitions for US and Yemeni scholars.

The AIYS library in Sana'a is one of the best collections on Yemen world-wide. The library has some 3000 monographs, the majority in Arabic; some 50 journal runs, both Yemeni and foreign; and a unique collection of 6000 articles dealing with Yemen. It contains most of the serious scholarly works by Yemenis and non-Yemenis, as well as many books produced throughout Yemen, including a collection of Yemeni school books. The collection includes 703 maps. There are also government reports, statistics and laws from pre-unification North and South Yemen, and from the unified state since 1990. The library also contains a significant collection of development studies, over 100 of them unpublished, on topics such as urban and regional planning, agricultural production, health and family, etc. AIYS' collection of more than 170 dissertations dealing with Yemen gathers in one place an extensive body of research on Yemen not otherwise accessible; an effort is now being made to identify and acquire also the dissertations produced in Eastern Europe by scholars from South Yemen before the unification.