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The Political Geography of Shoah Knowledge and Awareness, Estimated from the Analysis of Global Library Catalogues and Wikipedia User Statistics

 
Filed under: Post-Holocaust
Publication: Jewish Political Studies Review

Jewish Political Studies Review
Volume 31, Numbers 1-2

Abstract1

This article analyzes first provisional statistics on the availability of materials about the Shoah in the libraries of the world as an indicator of the global geography of Shoah knowledge and awareness. To estimate this global geography, we also asked how often people around the globe made use of the different language versions of the main Shoah article in the freely available internet encyclopedia Wikipedia. Our data suggest two divergent trends: a pessimistic one, based on library holdings, which coincides with the still existing scientific divide between the Western developed countries and the rest of the world; and a more optimistic one, based on freely available information on the internet.

Based on the data of our research project covering 165 library catalogues (54 nationwide union catalogues, 81 national libraries, 16 legislative-assembly libraries, 14 libraries of international organizations) and the OCLC Worldcat, which by itself includes no less than 70,000 libraries in more than 170 countries, we found that there is indeed a huge global gap in Shoah library holdings. Some 69.3% of the global library presence of the leading peer-reviewed journal in the field, Holocaust and Genocide Studies, in principle available to global publics, is encountered in libraries within the geographical distance of less than 1,000 miles from New York City or Brussels. We particularly analyze the lack of Shoah knowledge and awareness in many Muslim and Catholic countries. Apart from a special analysis of OCLC Worldcat data, we also use the data from eight Arabic and Iranian library networks and nine papal libraries in Rome.

We also present some multivariate analyses of the determinants of Shoah – related national library holdings in 81 countries.

The more optimistic tendencies suggest that compared to the share of the respective language group in total Wikipedia traffic, there was a relatively high download traffic in Portuguese, Spanish, German, Italian, Persian, and French. The percentages of the global total Shoah Wikipedia article downloads were: English (37%), Spanish (11%), Portuguese (8%), German (7%), Japanese (5%), French (5%), Russian (4%), Italian (4%), Chinese (2%), Dutch (2%), Persian (2%), Arabic (1%), Polish (1%), Indonesian (1%), and Romanian (1%). We offer some policy perspectives on how to increase global Shoah knowledge and awareness by creating a scholarly high-quality open-access depository to be managed possibly by leading research institutions in Israel, and we discuss possible international best-practice models for such a possible open-access scientific depository.

For some time now there has been rising concern about disturbing trends pointing to the lack of Shoah knowledge and awareness in different countries of the world.2 The New York Times, in an article published on April 12, 2018, spoke about the “Holocaust fading from memory.”3 As Julius Berman, president of the Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany (Claims Conference), recently stated: “Without education, we risk the history of the Holocaust being distorted and otherwise denied and those who were murdered being forgotten. Effective education is paramount towards ensuring that what happened in the past does not repeat itself.”4

Our study analyzes these trends, which reflect the realities of the globalized scientific and electronic world of the 21st century. These trends tell us how science, published to an increasing extent by the main transnational publishing corporations, is distributed across the geography of the libraries of our planet. Here we rely on international library holding data from 165 national union catalogues, national library catalogues, parliamentary libraries, and international organization libraries and on the OCLC Worldcat integrating on its own 70,000 libraries in 170 countries. We also analyze Wikipedia download statistics of the main Shoah article on Wikipedia in different languages around the world. These data suggest that there is an unmet interest in themes of the Shoah and also in reading about Israel among the global publics in our world, including in predominantly Muslim countries. If there are walls of ignorance, there are also many cracks in them.

Recent global opinion survey data5 about the global lack of Shoah knowledge and awareness serve as the necessary background to our empirical study.

The unequal global geographical distribution of Shoah library holdings is exacerbated by the challenges of the recent mass migration to the West from the countries of the global South, where this lack is most acute.

This article, then, will offer the following. After a short survey in the “Background” section of the limited existing international opinion data about knowledge and awareness of the Shoah,6 we discuss our methodology and then our results. We specifically look into the situation in the Arab countries and we also critically evaluate the dearth of Shoah library holdings in the global center of the Roman Catholic Church, the Vatican, and in its Pontifical Universities in Rome, notwithstanding explicit, published exhortations by the current pontiff, Pope Francis, to study the Shoah and to properly equip papal institutions of higher learning with adequate means of library holdings. We analyze some multivariate relationships of our library holdings data with standard economic, political, and social indicators, already presented in the pages of this journal,7 and we draw some tentative conclusions about how to increase international knowledge and awareness of the Shoah, especially based on the dissemination of high-quality open-access knowledge in the 21st century, which is best suited to overcome the hitherto existing situation.

It is hoped that other researchers will take up our methodology to arrive at still more comprehensive results of their own.

Background

In the following, we will quickly summarize the results of the very few existing international opinion surveys on the perceptions of international publics about the Shoah.8

Ebert Foundation study: Widespread Shoah memory abuse in Europe (“Jews try to take advantage of having been victims”)

Among the more recent international surveys, the German political think tank Friedrich Ebert Foundation, generally associated with the German Trade Union Confederation and the Social Democratic Party (SPD),9 commissioned a major study on prejudice in eight European countries, based on national representative samples and state-of-the art multivariate social science statistics.10 In the following, we project their available very limited results about Shoah knowledge and awareness onto a summarizing image. Image 1 thus tells us nothing more and nothing less than the percentage of people in Europe saying that they (very much) agree with the opinion that “Jews try to take advantage of having been victims during the Nazi era” (p. 171 of the study).

Image 1: The main result of the Ebert Foundation survey of opinions regarding the Shoah in eight European countries
The main result of the Ebert Foundation survey of opinions regarding the Shoah in eight European countries
Source: Our own compilation from Zick, Andreas, Beate Küpper, and Andreas Hövermann, Intolerance, prejudice and discrimination: A European report, Friedrich Ebert Foundation, 2011.

This depressing single but very telling result about the abuse of Shoah memory in Europe is analyzed in the Ebert study in the framework of a multiculturalist reading of events, focusing on prejudiced anti-Semitic perceptions as being determined by the general group-focused enmity of a society (anti-immigrant attitudes, racism, anti-Semitism, anti-Muslim attitudes, sexism, and homophobia as well as prejudices against other identified groups) in the eight surveyed European countries. The study was based on telephone surveys of a representative sample of 1,000 subjects per each country. In the multivariate statistical study, “Group-focused enmity” describes the syndrome of interlinked negative attitudes and prejudices toward groups identified as “other,” “different,” or “abnormal” and assigned inferior social status. The study concludes that – in accordance with the results reported in Image 1 above – general group-focused enmity is widespread in Europe. In the survey, it is weakest in the Netherlands and strongest in Poland and Hungary. Three ideological orientations analyzed in the Ebert survey are strongly statistically associated with group-focused enmity: authoritarianism (an underlying attitude espousing law and order and discipline), Social Dominance Orientation (advocating social status hierarchies), and the rejection of diversity (a general rejection of cultural, ethnic, and religious diversity within a country). Based on multivariate analysis, group-focused enmity increases with age and decreases with education and income; and attitudes differ little between men and women. General political attitudes (left-right orientation, etc.) are relevant only to a certain degree. But respondents, the Ebert study argues, who describe themselves as tending toward the political right, and who feel politically powerless, wish for a strong leader, and support the death penalty, are “on average more prejudiced.” The most important factors mitigating  group-focused enmity, according to the study, are “trust in others, the ability to forge firm friendships, contact with immigrants, and above all a positive basic attitude towards diversity.” Religiosity, on the other hand, does not mitigate group-focused enmity. And “universalism plays only a small role in explaining tolerant attitudes.”

The CNN 2018 survey: A third of Europeans say that commemorating the Shoah “distracts from other atrocities today”

A similar 2018 CNN poll11 revealed that a third of Europeans said that they knew just a little or nothing at all about the Shoah. The CNN survey interviewed more than 7,000 people across Europe, with more than 1,000 respondents each in Austria, France, Germany, Britain, Hungary, Poland, and Sweden. About one European in twenty has never even heard of the Shoah.12 Half of respondents said they knew “a fair amount” about the Shoah, while only one out of five people said they knew “a great deal.”13 According to CNN, two-thirds of Europeans said that commemorating the Shoah helps ensure that “such atrocities will never happen again.”14 Half of Europeans said commemorating the Shoah helps fight anti-Semitism today. In another case of typical abuse of Shoah memory, a remarkable third of Europeans said that – in the words of the study –commemorating the Shoah “distracts from other atrocities today,” with even higher-than-average numbers of Germans, Austrians, Poles, and Hungarians consenting to such an opinion.15

The Claims Conference survey

Recent studies commissioned by the Claims Conference also revealed a rather shocking lack of knowledge and awareness about the Shoah in Austria, the birthplace of Adolf Hitler and Adolf Eichmann, more than 80 years after the Anschluss,16 and in the United States and in Canada. Eight percent of Austrians, 10% of Americans, and 3% of Canadians believe that it was not the terror apparatus of the Nazis but “the Jews” themselves who caused the Shoah! Only less than half of the surveyed publics in Austria (44%), the United States (49%), and Canada (46%) could correctly identify the number of the six million Jewish victims of the Shoah (question 13 of the Claims Conference study, March 2019).17 In addition, only 55% of Austrians could correctly identify the year 1938 as that of the Anschluss (question 20 of the study), making a real mockery of the efforts by successive Austrian governments, the media, and NGOs to honor, in the “commemorative year 2018” (“Gedenkjahr 2018”),18 the victims of the Nazi persecution, which began in Austria in March 1938. Thus, the efforts of the entire political system, the Austrian public broadcasting company, ORF, and the rest of the media to commemorate the events of 1938 were for all purposes practically lost on no less than 45% of the Austrian public.19

Global lack of Shoah awareness and Shoah denial: The ADL survey

Without question, the study with the most encompassing global coverage of the subject is the so-called ADL 100 study commissioned by the Anti-Defamation League (ADL). In its pathbreaking survey of global anti-Semitism,20 the ADL came to the conclusion that Shoah denial is a global phenomenon. This conclusion has gone far too neglected in international research.21 From the many materials mentioned in the study, we provide the following comparative statistical table about Holocaust denial (Table 1):

Table 1: International Holocaust denial – data based on the ADL 100 global survey 22

Country

% of people saying the number of Jews who died in the Shoah has been exaggerated or that the Shoah is a myth

Netherlands

4%

UK

5%

Denmark

6%

USA

6%

Belgium

7%

France

7%

Italy

7%

Germany

8%

Spain

14%

Ukraine

17%

Poland

19%

UK – Muslims

20%

Russia

21%

Romania

24%

Hungary

26%

Latvia

26%

France – Muslims

27%

Greece

28%

Argentina

31%

Germany – Muslims

31%

Italy – Muslims

34%

Belgium – Muslims

35%

Spain – Muslims

42%

Turkey

53%

Iran

62%

In the different world regions, the following are the percentages of people who say that they have heard about the Shoah but think it is either a myth or has been exaggerated:23

Oceania                                                              0.8%

Western Europe                                              11%

Americas                                                           21%

Eastern Europe                                                24%

Asia                                                                    41%

Sub-Saharan Africa                                        44%

Middle East and North Africa                     63%

A further breakdown of these data reveals even more disturbing tendencies:24

  • 75% of Middle East and North African Muslims (compared to 55% of Muslims residing in Europe) hold anti-Semitic views.
  • 64% of Middle East and North African Muslims (compared to 31% of Muslims residing in Europe) are aware of the Shoah but say it is a myth or has been greatly exaggerated by history.

In many Muslim and non-Muslim developing countries, low awareness of the Shoah is not the exception but the rule. The ADL data25 referring to this speak for themselves:

 

Table 2: Low Shoah awareness in many developing countries – data based on the ADL 100 survey

Shoah awareness (in % of total population)

Laos

9%

Indonesia

10%

Philippines

10%

Uganda

12%

Bangladesh

14%

Ghana

14%

Tanzania

15%

Côte d’Ivoire

17%

Vietnam

17%

Nigeria

19%

Table 3 summarizes the extremely high rates of Holocaust denial in the Arab world. For all practical purposes, three-fourths to four-fifths of the respondents must be classified as Holocaust deniers:

Table 3: Holocaust denial in the Arab world – data based on the ADL 100 survey
 

Rates of Holocaust denial (in % of total population)

West Bank and Gaza

82%

Qatar

79%

Algeria

77%

Yemen

77%

Saudi Arabia

76%

Bahrain

75%

United Arab Emirates

72%

Kuwait

71%

Libya

70%

Jordan

70%

Thus, while the Ebert survey underlined the necessity to uphold multiculturalism and tolerance as a strategy against group-focused enmity, which leads toward anti-Semitism and the abuse of Shoah memory (see Image 1), the ADL 100 survey, by contrast, concluded that there is a clear global North-South and North-East dimension of Shoah awareness and that Holocaust denial is most severe in the Arab world. What, then, to do in Europe in a time of mass migration from precisely those countries, on which the ADL survey focused as the main global center of contemporary low Shoah knowledge and awareness and high Holocaust denial?

The Eurobarometer study

Instead of confronting these issues directly, the statistical apparatus of the European Union has been slow (to say the least) and even practically unwilling to react to these necessities. The opinion-survey instrument of the European Commission, Eurobarometer, in its sole available study on the subject,26 only dared to ask respondents (N= 27,643) about their perceptions of anti-Semitism around them and dismally failed to ask Europeans about their real, existing anti-Semitic prejudices or their perceptions of the Shoah. In the following, we present – using the language of the Eurobarometer survey – the most important conclusions from this study.

  • Half of Europeans (50%) consider that anti-Semitism is a problem in their country. However, a majority of respondents think so, according to Eurobarometer, in eight EU member states: Sweden, France, Germany, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, Italy, Belgium, and Austria. Eurobarometer, in its report, also states that “around a fifth of Europeans (19%) have friends or acquaintances who are Jewish” and reports that “only around a third of Europeans (36%) believe that Antisemitism has increased in their country over the past five years.” All other respondents are of the opinion that anti-Semitism has “remained the same (39%), decreased (10%) or have no opinion (15%).”
  • At least half of Europeans think that six of the nine manifestations of anti-Semitism are “a problem in their country.” The study says that “Holocaust denial is considered the most pernicious problem, followed by Antisemitism on the Internet, antisemitic graffiti or vandalism, and expressions of hostility and threats towards Jewish people in public places.” But the study shies away from an effort to study the real extent of Holocaust denial in contemporary Europe!
  • More than four in ten Europeans (42%) are aware that there is a law against Holocaust denial in their country of residence. But the study fails to ask people in the 28 surveyed European publics whether or not they endorse the existence of such laws.
  • Eurobarometer also states that more than four in ten Europeans (43%) think that the Shoah is sufficiently taught in schools of their country, but nearly the same proportion (42%) think the opposite.
  • In view of the shocking ADL data about Muslim attitudes on Jews and the Shoah, presented above, Eurobarometer does not present any evidence on contemporary attitudes of Europeans on Jews and the Shoah that is disaggregated by religious denomination or religious practice of the respondents, and even reports that over half of Europeans (54%) believe that the conflicts in the Middle East have an influence on the way Jewish people are perceived in their country. A majority share this opinion in 13 EU member states, mainly in Northern and Western Europe.
  • In order to determine the main ways in which anti-Semitism is expressed, respondents were asked whether they considered nine situations as a problem in their country. The list was as follows: (1) anti-Semitic graffiti or vandalism of Jewish buildings or institutions; (2) physical attacks against Jewish people; (3) expressions of hostility and threats toward Jewish people in the street or other public places; (4) anti-Semitism in the media; (5) anti-Semitism in political life; (6) anti-Semitism on the internet, including online social networks; (7) anti-Semitism in schools and universities; (8) people denying the genocide of the Jewish people, the Holocaust; and (9) desecration of Jewish cemeteries. At least half the respondents say that six of these situations are a problem in their country: 53% for “people denying the genocide of the Jewish people, the Holocaust”; 51% for “anti-Semitism on the internet, including online social networks,” “anti-Semitic graffiti or vandalism of Jewish buildings or institutions,” and “expressions of hostility and threats toward Jewish people in the street or other public places”; and 50% for the “desecration of Jewish cemeteries” and “physical attacks against Jewish people.” Forty-three percent of respondents believe that anti-Semitism in schools and universities is a problem in their country; 43% feel the same about anti-Semitism in political life and 41% think that anti-Semitism in the media is a problem.

In addition to our summary of the main, very limited, existing surveys of European and international opinion on Shoah knowledge and awareness, some other published studies underline the perception emerging from the ADL 100 data.27 These studies all stress the necessity to continue research work on the issues, as indicated by Table 1 of our study.

Methodology and data

The methodologies presented here are an invitation to the global research community to undertake scholarly work of its own on the ways in which Shoah knowledge and awareness is transmitted by the communication channels of the 21st century.

Finding out the correct search term to investigate global library holdings on the Shoah

We should make it clear at the outset of our study that there are very strong reasons to use the term Shoah and not Holocaust in library search profiles when searching for materials referring to the murder of six million Jews by Nazi Germany and its allies.28 First, the Hebrew word Shoah captures uniquely and at once the contemporary Jewish and international understanding of the events in Germany and Europe from 1933 onward, and it refers specifically and virtually without any possibility of error to the unique crime of the mass murder of European Jewry by the Nazi German regime. Searching in library catalogues for texts with the word Holocaust in the title would produce many items not referring at all to the suffering of European Jewry, while searching libraries for texts with the word Shoah in the title will give us a clue to the true library holdings linked to the specific contemporary understanding existing today in the state of Israel. Today, studies with the word Holocaust in the title but not dealing with the Shoah abound, such as books on the rape of Nanking in China by the Japanese,29 on Columbus and the conquest of the modern world,30 on the Rwandan Holocaust,31 and so on. These are only some of the world’s best-known titles, to judge by the library-presence ranking in the OCLC Worldcat.32

 

To our knowledge, the writer and editor Yehuda Erez was the first to use the term Shoah in his article “With the Shoah in Europe,” published in December 1938. In it he stated: “We are horrified at the foundation by the shoah that is taking place upon the heads of German Jewry.”33

The unequivocal clarity of the Hebrew language helps us find the library holdings that truly are devoted to the subject. We should also note here that we exclusively used the Latin transliteration of the Hebrew word and not its Hebrew original השואה, because for technical reasons the search profiles of many libraries would not allow us to do so. OCLC Worldcat currently lists 78,633 items with the title “Holocaust” and 62,653 items with the title “Shoah.”34

Our results presented here are but a first impression of the tendencies which are at work; further research along the lines proposed here could establish much more thoroughly the global geography and sociology of Shoah knowledge and awareness.

Bibliometrics and Webometrics

In this context, bibliometrics35 and webometrics36 are two adequate powerful tools of modern science – in our case, social science – and they allow us to ask fundamental questions about the structure of international knowledge accumulation and dissemination37 with practically no additional costs for the researcher, using existing and freely available international data.38 All you need is the methodology, a laptop, a tablet or even only a smartphone, and an internet connection.

In many ways such a methodology might appear to be proxy or even “forensic” in nature. Yet, in fact, bibliometric39 data from nationwide academic, national, and legislative-assembly library catalogues and international organizations reveal to us what a nation reads and what it does not read (except in open-access depositories on the internet; see below). The same applies to the institution being analyzed here as well, the Roman Catholic Church, and its libraries in its administrative center, the Vatican and the city of Rome.

Using such a startlingly simple methodology enables us to take an initial and thorough radar-screen look at the global geography of national and international scientific knowledge accumulation on a given subject, in our case the Shoah. Generally, international library holding data are a revealing and very up-to-date exemplification of what the political scientist Karl Wolfgang Deutsch (1912-1992) once called “the nerves of government.”40

The Libcitation methodology

The methodology of counting the number of books available around the globe on a given subject or by a given author or institution was first developed by the Excellence in Research for Australia program by Howard D. White et al.41

The methodology developed was originally designed to estimate the global or also regional presence of themes, authors, universities, research institutes, or an entire scientific community around the globe. To apply this methodology, our project comprises an up-to-date collection of national library union catalogues, national library catalogues, legislative-assembly library catalogues, and international organization library catalogues.

The work of librarians is seen here to reflect in an almost seismological way the intellectual climate of a given academic institution or of an entire country or an organization.42 Add to this that a national library must be regarded as the “visitors” card of the book and media culture of a nation. Librarians using their scarce resources to order a copy of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion and withhold the availability of scientific journals or books dealing with Jewish history and the Shoah reflect the prejudices of a given academia, of a given institution like the Vatican, or of a major international organization. By their nonexistent library orders, they “voted” that the Shoah is beyond the perimeter of what is considered “important” in the book culture of a nation or of an organization. By contrast, also smaller numbers of holdings – especially in poorer countries – on the Shoah underline the global awareness of the Shoah.

Considering the harsh realities of what is generally referred to as the “Middle East,” we might add that librarians ordering copies of good and serious literature or even a subscription to a serious scholarly journal on the Shoah can be interpreted as a sign of hope that Arab publics and Muslim publics in general are beginning to question the omnipresent character of the “anti-Zionism” narrative surrounding them and the widespread Holocaust denial in this part of the world. In addition, 8,700 Farsi speakers, 7,200 Arabic speakers, and 6,100 Indonesian speakers now downloading the Wikipedia article on the Shoah each month are truly a hopeful sign.

Further analyses, hopefully to be inspired by this article, could also be based on the website statistics analysis tool Alexa.43

The further subsections of our methodology section are directed at specialists and members of the international research community, and should serve the retrievability of our results and inspire further research. Readers not particularly interested in bibliometric and webometric methodology can skip over the following subsections and immediately begin to read our results.

Analyzing national union catalogues

Once a monopoly of the developed countries, today library union catalogues have greatly expanded into Eastern Europe and the developing world.44 Easily available lists of the one-click internet access to these searchable library consortia now include:

  • The website KVK – Karlsruhe Virtual Catalog,45 developed by the librarians and internet technicians of Karlsruhe Technical University in Germany.
  • The so-called ShareILL list. ShareILL is an international interlibrary loan and document delivery information center. It is designed, maintained, and sustained by members of the resource-sharing community.46

The list prepared by ShareILL covers several countries, also included in the “Karlsruhe list,” but in addition, it offers access to a number of other national union catalogues. But we considerably expanded these existing lists with our own research, and today can analyze the library holdings of 55 national union catalogues including the catalogue of the European Commission in Brussels.47 We weeded out all those library union catalogues which are listed in various sources but  unfortunately are not operative or even produce a high security risk for a computer system as shown by antivirus programs. Our research also revealed the drama of the nonexistence of a real nationwide library union catalogue for Germany, the European Union’s leading economy, which even today only offers a patchwork of different regional catalogues. Thus, we are able to provide reliable data about the Shoahrelated library holdings in the encompassing library consortia of the following countries:

  • Albania; Algeria; Australia; Austria; Belgium; Bosnia and Herzegovina; Brazil; Bulgaria; Canada; Central America (Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, and Panama); China; Costa Rica; Croatia; Czech Republic; Denmark; Egypt; Estonia; European Commission Libraries; Finland; France; Germany (different catalogues for Baden Württemberg; Bavaria; Berlin State; Hesse; Lower Saxony, Saxony-Anhalt, Thuringia, Hamburg, Bremen, Schleswig-Holstein and Mecklenburg-Vorpommern; North Rhine-Westphalia);48 Hungary; Iceland; India; Israel; Italy; Japan; Jordan; Korea (South); Latvia; Lithuania; Luxembourg; Malta; Montenegro; New Zealand; Northern Macedonia; Poland; Philippines; Portugal; Saudi Arabia plus 24 Arab countries (Aruc Arab Union Catalogue); Serbia; Slovenia; Sweden; Switzerland; Thailand; Tunisia; Turkey; United Kingdom; Vatican

Analyzing the holdings in national libraries

A growing number of national libraries from around the world now offer free access to their library catalogues, not only in the developed Western countries but also in the new democracies of Eastern Europe, in Russia, and in the developing countries.49 Easily available lists of the one-click internet access to these searchable library consortia again include the KVK – Karlsruhe Virtual Catalog.50 The KVK catalogue thus offers access not only to a fair number of important union catalogues but also to the integrated holdings of national libraries. In our results, we also provide data about the Shoah-related library holdings at the Library of Congress in Washington,51 which is to be considered as America’s national library, and also the national libraries mentioned in the ShareILL list of national libraries.52 In addition, we used the one-click access to the digital national libraries of Latin America, available via the platform Iberoamerica digital, as additional information.53 Also, the national library list provided by Wikipedia proved here to be rather useful in this context.54 We also cross-checked these lists of national libraries with other well-known websites referring to this subject, augmented by our own internet research.55 Our final consolidated list of the electronically available catalogues of national libraries around the world, specifically developed for this research project, now comprises 81 entries:

  • Albania; Argentina; Australia; Austria; Azerbaijan; Bahamas; Belarus; Belgium; Bhutan; Bosnia and Herzegovina; Brazil; Canada; Chile; China; Colombia; Costa Rica; Croatia; Cuba; Cyprus; Czech Republic; Denmark; Ecuador; Egypt; Finland; France; Germany; Greece; Hungary; Iceland; India; Indonesia; Iran; Iraq; Irish Republic; Israel; Italy; Jamaica; Japan; Kazakhstan; Korea (South); Kuwait; Latvia; Liechtenstein; Lithuania; Luxembourg; Malaysia; Maldives; Malta; Mexico; Moldova; Monaco; Namibia; Netherlands; New Zealand; Norway; Oman; Panama; Peru; Poland; Portugal; Portugal; Romania; Russia; Saudi Arabia; Serbia; Singapore; Slovak Republic; Slovenia; Spain; Sweden; Switzerland; Taiwan – China; Thailand; Trinidad and Tobago; Turkey; Ukraine; United Kingdom; United States; Uruguay; Vatican; Venezuela.

Analyzing the holdings in legislative assembly libraries

The catalogues of legislative assembly libraries are an important clue to what is on the minds of the lawmakers and their staff around the world. To find out these catalogues was not very easy.56 To investigate the Shoahrelated library holdings of international lawmaking bodies, we finally relied on a list provided by the Congreso Nacional de Chile57 in the framework of the Chilean parliament’s international and global role in the Parliamentary Libraries section of the International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions (IFLA).58 Other links on the subject, still mentioned by internet search engines, such as those by the German Bundestag, are not operative anymore.59 Further research on this subject could also cover the parliamentary libraries not yet included in our present project.60 Our parliamentary library list, expanded by our own internet search for operative library catalogues of national lawmaking assemblies, now includes 16 countries plus the European Parliament. The countries covered by our research are:

  • Australia, Austria, Brazil, Canada, Chile, European Union – European Parliament, Finland, Georgia, Germany, Italy, Japan, Mexico, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, United States

Analyzing the holdings in the libraries of international organizations

For our research, we also collected 14 operative library catalogues of major international organizations, showing huge differences between the approaches of these international organizations:61

  • African Union; Asian Development Bank; Council of Europe; European Union; International Labour Organization; NATO; OSCE (OSCE Academy Bishkek); UN ECA Addis Ababa; UN ECLAC Santiago; UN ESCWA Beirut; UNESCO Digital Library; United Nations Geneva; United Nations New York; World Bank and IMF

The master lists of the libraries used – a key for possible further research

In order not to overburden our text with 165 website addresses, we provide our readers with a single and encompassing master list of the library catalogues used in our investigation in Appendix Table 1. This master list should facilitate further investigations by researchers using the methodology described in our essay (see Appendix Table 1).

Counting the books of the Vatican, including its universities and think tanks

Appendix Table 2 lists the library addresses of the Pontifical Universities in Rome by a first, and admittedly very limited international comparison. Our list is far from exhaustive, and further research on the subject could look into the Shoahrelated library holdings of all the libraries of the dozens of Pontifical Universities around the world.62 Our list currently includes the library catalogues of the Pontifical Universities in the city of Rome itself in a fairly encompassing way:

  • Biblioteca “Paolo VI” – Pontificia Facoltà di Scienze dell’Educazione “Auxilium” (the Papal Faculty of Educational Sciences)
  • Pontifical Gregorian University “Gregoriana” (run by the Jesuits)
  • Pontifical Lateran University “Lateranum” (run by the Dioceses of Rome)
  • Pontifical Salesian University “Salesianum” (run by the Salesians)
  • Pontifical University of St. Anthony “Antonianum” (run by the Franciscans)
  • Pontifical University of St. Thomas Aquinas “Angelicum” (run by the Dominicans)
  • Pontifical University of the Holy Cross “Santa Croce” (run by the Opus Dei)
  • Pontifical Orient Institute

The library catalogues of the Pontifical Universities used for our comparison at the relatively early stage of our research were the following important Pontifical Universities in Eastern Europe and Latin America:

  • Papal University John Paul II, Krakow, Poland
  • Pontifical Catholic University of Chile, Santiago
  • Pontifical Xavierian University, Bogotá, Colombia
  • Pontifícia Universidade Católica do Rio de Janeiro, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

Analyzing the data from the OCLC Worldcat – 70,000 libraries in 170 countries with 450 billion records at one click

Another approximation of global library holdings about the Shoah can be based on the global library network OCLC Worldcat.63 The network was founded in 1967 at the Ohio College Library Center as a federation of just 54 Ohio colleges, while today it already brings together more than 70,000 libraries in more than 170 countries. As of May 2019, the collection comprised more than 450 million bibliographical records and nearly 2.8 billion library holdings. The OCLC thus catalogues a good part of the wealth of wisdom of humanity, published in 484 languages. Currently the share of documents published in the English language reaches 39%.64 It is by far the largest library network in the world and it offers unique opportunities for research in all disciplines, including Shoah-related studies. Its full version, OCLC First Search, today is an indispensable tool for academic research, analysis, and academic strategy planning.65

OCLC Classify is an open-access platform which ranks the data from more than 450 million bibliographical records, and nearly 2.8 billion library holdings in 484 languages, in 70,000 libraries across the globe according to their global library presence.66

It must be emphasized at the outset that the geography of the global distribution of library holdings around the world reveals startling details about an enormous concentration of the limited access of global citizens to relevant scientific information. As a preliminary rule of thumb, one can start from the assumption, well tested with global access data to the leading journals of social science, that around 75% of the global library holdings of these journals are concentrated in the countries of the developed West.67 Our article largely corroborates these findings.

Turning to the realities of the Middle East, one arrives quickly at the conclusion that it is a good guess to state that only the following libraries in the Arab world contain a larger amount of Western social science literature in general:

  • Egypt: Misr International University, MIU, Cairo; MSA Modern Science and Arts University, Cairo; American University, Cairo
  • Iraq: American University of Iraq, Sulaimani
  • Jordan: Al Hussein Bin Talal University, Ma’an; Mutah University, Karak; Philadelphia University (Jordan); Jerash Private University; Amman Central Bank of Jordan, Amman; Princess Sumaya University for Technology, Amman; University of Jordan, Amman; Hashemite University; Zarqa al-Bayt University, Mafraq
  • Lebanon: Notre Dame University-Louaizé, Zouk Mosbeh; Lebanese American University Libraries, Beirut; University of Balamand, Amioun; American Education Institute UCM, Beirut
  • Morocco: Fondation du Roi Abdul-Aziz, Casablanca; King Abdul-Aziz Al Saoud Foundation for Islamic Studies and Human Sciences, Casablanca; Akhawayn University Library, Ifrane; Ecole d’Gouvernance et D’Economie, Rabat
  • Qatar: Qatar University, Doha
  • Saudi-Arabia: National Center for Financial and Economic Information, Riyadh; King Fahad National Library, Riyadh
  • United Arab Emirates: Abu Dhabi University, Adu Library, Abu Dhabi; Petroleum Institute, Abu Dhabi; United Arab Emirates University, Al Ain; British University in Dubai, BUiD Library; American University of Sharjah

We can estimate from the OCLC data that of the more than 300 million books currently held in global libraries, more than 120 million books were published in English, 43 million in German, and around 31 million in French. Of the 20.8 million books published over the last five years, 45% were published in English, and in the field of political science, for example, this share was even 55%.68

Our article attempts to provide some initial basic ideas about the global presence of titles related to the Shoah in the framework of these highly concentrated global-library means of knowledge distribution, and it does so with the help of OCLC tools, such as OCLC First Search, but also the open-access portals OCLC Classify,69 OCLC advanced search,70 and TE PUNA (the New Zealand Library catalogue) on OCLC,71 which freely offers great opportunities for the global research community.

The basic idea of the OCLC project, which was founded by Frederick Kilgour (1914 – 2006) 45 years ago, was to unify the knowledge of humanity available in all the libraries of the world.72 Today the catalogue ranges from the University of Alaska in Fairbanks, Alaska, to the Universidad de Concepción in southern Chile, and from Tromsö University in northern Norway to the University of Cape Town, South Africa, and is now expanding into the Asia-Pacific region as well as into the Middle East; in addition, Worldcat now integrates major libraries in the BRIICS countries. It will be difficult to find a university library from one of the top 100 universities in the world, classified under the Shanghai University Ranking73 System, or the Scimago-SIR University and Research Institute ranking74 based on Scopus-indexed publications,75 which is not a member of the OCLC Worldcat. Virtually all major libraries in Western Europe are also members of the OCLC Worldcat today, for example, 428 in Germany, 1,212 in France, and 261 in Italy. Membership in the Middle Eastern region is strongly expanding.76 Currently there are twenty member libraries in Israel, seven in Egypt, six in Qatar, and so on. With 40 million daily accesses worldwide, OCLC is a real radar screen of the wealth of global library holdings. One of the startling advantages of the system is that it also offers its users not only to rank scientific titles with a given title word or author name by the global library impact this title word or author has achieved, but it also allows users to search for a given location around the globe where this item is being held, and it tells users even the geographical distance to the next library where this item is to be found.

Combining OCLC Worldcat analysis with Scopus-based scientific journal rankings

Even on a smartphone, and even with the open-access version contained in the New Zealand TE PUNA on Worldcat, the OCLC Worldcat users might also find out, for example, the listing of the global libraries that are subscribed to the world’s leading journal in the field of Shoah-related studies, namely, Holocaust and Genocide Studies (Oxford University Press)77 (see Image 2). Thus OCLC Worldcat allows researchers, as already noted, to analyze the geography of global library holdings. A researcher enters the title in whose global presence he or she is interested, and enters the country under scrutiny. The system tells the researcher whether or not the title is available in a given country, and also lists the availability of the title in the geographical vicinity. Concerning scholarly journals, we suggest combining this methodology with the freely available journal-ranking system Scimago (based on citations in other scientific journals)78 or MIAR (based on a journal’s inclusion in global scientific indices and abstract services).79 The entire range of the methodology of this exercise is shown in Image 2.

Image 2: The impact factor (H-Index) and the global library presence of Holocaust and Genocide Studies according to Scimago journal rankings and the OCLC Worldcat
Holocaust and Genocide Studies
The methodology reveals that the leading Shoah-related journal in the world, Holocaust and Genocide Studies, receives an impact of 16 (H-Index) in the worldwide journal literature, while Gender and Society, for example, has an H-Index of 89.
Holocaust and Genocide Studies
In Saudi Arabia, no OCLC library is subscribed to the journal Holocaust and Genocide Studies, and there are only a few libraries in the rest of the Arab world making it available to library users.

Holocaust and Genocide Studies

So, in a nutshell, OCLC Worldcat and OCLC Classify could answer the query about which of the most widely circulated Shoah-related publications are not only available at Harvard and Yale, Oxford and Cambridge, but, say, at the Nehru University in Delhi, and at the University in Sao Paulo. And in Morocco and Jordan, in Ghana, in Mongolia and in China? In Sydney and in Singapore? Malaysia or Botswana? And all this is made visible today with a single mouse click on one’s computer or with the touch of one’s thumb on a tablet or smartphone!

Analyzing the geography of global library holdings

OCLC Worldcat also tells us, for example, that in the geographical vicinity of 100 km (62 miles) from New York City, there are 42 libraries holding the present journal – the Jewish Political Studies Review80 – while library users would have to travel more than 1,000 km (621 miles) from Moscow to the National Library of Poland to get a copy of the JPSR (if they do not read it on the internet)81 and there are only five copies of the JPSR registered in the libraries of Latin America. Also, notably, the OCLC Worldcat tells its users that there is an equal number of subscribers to the present journal in the predominantly Muslim country of Malaysia as in the whole of Latin America – five libraries. The potentialities of this research methodology are practically unlimited, and the author hopes researchers will take up the opportunity to work on the “cartography” of the global library holding structure of Shoahrelated books and journals.

For this essay, we especially designed a methodology which allows us to inform readers quickly and in general terms about the geographical distribution of OCLC Worldcat library holdings at a single glance, working with the concept of libraries in the vicinity of major geographical centers of the developed, industrial Western world, Southern Africa,82 and the centers of new industrialization in East Asia

  • United States and Canada: libraries in the vicinity of < 3,800 km (2,361 miles) from Winnipeg, Canada, in the geographical center of English-speaking North America. With this specification, only libraries in the United States and Canada are included.
  • European Union: libraries in the vicinity of < 1,750 km (1,087 miles) from Brussels, Belgium. With this specification, only libraries in the European Union are included.
  • Australia: libraries in the vicinity of < 3,800 km (2,361 miles) from Perth, Australia. With this specification, only libraries in Australia are included.
  • New Zealand: libraries in the vicinity of < 800 km (497 miles) from Wellington, New Zealand. With this specification, only libraries in New Zealand are included
  • Southern Africa: libraries in the vicinity of < 4000 km (2,485 miles) from Cape Town, South Africa. This specification included all the Worldcat libraries from Cape Town to Nairobi.83
  • East Asia: libraries in the vicinity of < 3000 km (1,864 miles) from Hong Kong, China. This specification includes the economically important region of East Asia.

Even at the risk of some minor overlapping, we can also easily discover the number of holdings in Latin America, Sub-Saharan Africa, and Asia:

  • Latin America and the Caribbean: libraries in the vicinity of < 5,700 (3,542 miles) km from Campo Grande, Brazil, in the geographical center of Latin America and the Caribbean. Such a specification excludes libraries in Florida and California.
  • Sub-Saharan Africa: libraries in the vicinity of < 3600 km (2,237 miles) from Yaunde, Cameroon, in the geographical center of Sub-Saharan Africa.
  • Asia: libraries in the vicinity of < 3700 km (2,299 miles) from Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia, in the geographical center of East Asia.

The special analysis of the libraries in the Middle East and in the Vatican

Our methodology and the data now at the readers’ disposal also permit an in-depth analysis of the library holdings in nations and institutions where there is often a notorious lack of Shoah knowledge and awareness, i.e., in the Middle East and in the different worlds of Catholicism, headed in the hierarchical system of the global Catholic Church by the Vatican. To this end, we performed the following:

  • Analyses of the Shoah-relevant library holdings in the Arab countries, based on the OCLC Worldcat and on the available Arab Union catalogues. To find out the presence of Shoahrelated titles in Arab OCLC Worldcat member libraries, we entered the names of the member states of the Arab League into the OCLC Worldcat search profile, country-wise.
  • Analyses of the Shoah-relevant library holdings in the main Vatican library,84 used by the pontiff and the entire Vatican administration, as well as the library holdings of the Pontifical Universities in Rome (see above).

For that purpose, we drew up a list of the library catalogues of the Pontifical Universities, contained in Appendix Table 2 (see above).

Webometrics

Another methodology, used in this essay to confront the realities of Shoah knowledge and awareness in the 21st century, is webometrics. Google Scholar already mentions 13,000 items using the term webometrics, which is generally understood to be a method to make statements about opinions and trends based on user statistics from the internet. With internet density reaching global record levels, such a methodology is thus more than justified.85 In all this, we must regard Wikipedia download statistics as a first and very reliable seismograph of global social network trends. Wikipedia, the free internet encyclopedia founded on January 15, 2001, has become a huge international factor and today also includes articles on virtually all key issues of history and politics. The online encyclopedia was, according to its own data, the fifth most frequently visited website on earth. Its 49.3 million articles in almost 300 languages are therefore also a treasure trove for the research on Judaism, Israel, the memory of the victims of the Shoah, and global anti-Semitism.

With the easy-to-use on-demand download statistics program available from Wikipedia, social trends in the world can be clearly and quickly analyzed. The methodology reveals the global impact of any issue or personality one can imagine according to the language of the article of interest.

Washington’s PEW Research Center estimated that the English-language version of the encyclopedia was already receiving annually 97.2 billion queries worldwide, followed by 15 billion in Japanese, 14.3 billion in Spanish, 13 billion in German, 12.0 billion in Russian, 9.2 billion in French, 6.4 billion in Italian, 4.9 billion in Chinese, 4.1 billion in Portuguese, and 3.5 billion in Polish per year. Another way to estimate the global distribution of downloads from Wikipedia is to ask the system for the download figures of the culturally most neutral article in this context, the Wikipedia article on the encyclopedia Wikipedia itself.

Table 4: Estimating the real size of the global Wikipedia readerships in the different languages of the world, based on a culturally neutral subject – the readership of the Wikipedia article on the encyclopedia Wikipedia

English-language name

Language code

Number of downloads of Wikipedia article on the encyclopedia Wikipedia, last 20 days of June 2019

Daily average

% of global downloads

English

en

1,518,715

72320

65.3030

Japanese

ja

110,473

5261

4.7502

Russian

ru

84,254

4012

3.6228

German

de

73,366

3494

3.1547

Spanish

es

67,857

3231

2.9178

Korean

ko

45,407

2162

1.9525

Chinese

zh

40,863

1946

1.7571

French

fr

31,524

1501

1.3555

Italian

it

28,181

1342

1.2118

Polish

pl

25,106

1196

1.0795

Vietnamese

vi

22,848

1088

0.9824

Portuguese

pt

15,359

731

0.6604

Turkish

tr

13,695

652

0.5889

Arabic

ar

11,820

563

0.5082

Persian

fa

11,739

559

0.5048

Dutch

nl

11,401

543

0.4902

Czech

cs

8,940

426

0.3844

Swedish

sv

7,466

356

0.3210

Hindi

hi

6,577

313

0.2828

Indonesian

id

6,257

298

0.2690

Hebrew

he

5,434

259

0.2337

Norwegian

no

5,403

257

0.2323

Simple English

simple

5,400

257

0.2322

Bengali

bn

4,903

233

0.2108

Hungarian

hu

3,669

175

0.1578

Thai

th

3,244

154

0.1395

Finnish

fi

3,214

153

0.1382

Tagalog

tl

3,211

153

0.1381

Serbian

sr

2,327

111

0.1001

Georgian

ka

2,238

107

0.0962

Ukrainian

uk

2,220

106

0.0955

Danish

da

2,195

105

0.0944

Greek

el

1,906

91

0.0820

Bulgarian

bg

1,813

86

0.0780

Uzbek

uz

1,782

85

0.0766

Slovenian

sl

1,761

84

0.0757

Romanian

ro

1,754

84

0.0754

Croatian

hr

1,653

79

0.0711

Catalan

ca

1,590

76

0.0684

Azerbaijani

az

1,512

72

0.0650

Lithuanian

lt

1,406

67

0.0605

Slovak

sk

1,354

64

0.0582

Basque

eu

1,254

60

0.0539

Swahili

sw

1,185

56

0.0510

Malayalam

ml

1,174

56

0.0505

Estonian

et

1,102

52

0.0474

Afrikaans

af

1,043

50

0.0448

Tamil

ta

1,026

49

0.0441

Bosnian

bs

994

47

0.0427

Minnan

zh-min-nan

926

44

0.0398

Egyptian Arabic

arz

906

43

0.0390

Latvian

lv

871

41

0.0375

Serbo-Croatian

sh

852

41

0.0366

Cantonese

zh-yue

764

36

0.0329

Buriat (Russia)

bxr

711

34

0.0306

Jamaican Patois

jam

692

33

0.0298

Irish

ga

684

33

0.0294

Aragonese

an

678

32

0.0292

Kannada

kn

673

32

0.0289

Marathi

mr

673

32

0.0289

Malay

ms

663

32

0.0285

Somalia

so

654

31

0.0281

Urdu

ur

632

30

0.0272

Belarusian

be

628

30

0.0270

Kazakh

kk

626

30

0.0269

Albanian

sq

620

30

0.0267

Southern Azerbaijani

azb

616

29

0.0265

Burmese

my

608

29

0.0261

Bashkir

ba

605

29

0.0260

Esperanto

eo

601

29

0.0258

Icelandic

is

590

28

0.0254

Carpatho-Russinic

rue

586

28

0.0252

Cornish

kw

585

28

0.0252

Amharic

am

583

28

0.0251

Armenian

hy

577

27

0.0248

Manx

gv

572

27

0.0246

Alemannic

als

548

26

0.0236

Lesgish

lez

548

26

0.0236

Aramaic

arc

546

26

0.0235

Chuvash

cv

537

26

0.0231

Mongolian

mn

530

25

0.0228

Galician

gl

519

25

0.0223

Breton

br

517

25

0.0222

Asturian

ast

514

24

0.0221

Ladino/Judeo-Español

lad

511

24

0.0220

Panjabi / Punjabi

pa

509

24

0.0219

Occitan

oc

508

24

0.0218

Scots

sco

505

24

0.0217

Luxembourgish

lb

504

24

0.0217

Latin

la

494

24

0.0212

Quechua

qu

492

23

0.0212

Mari

mhr

491

23

0.0211

Angal

ang

490

23

0.0211

Kabiye

kbp

488

23

0.0210

Waray / Samar-Leyte Visayan

war

487

23

0.0209

Yiddish

yi

479

23

0.0206

Scottish Gaelic

gd

478

23

0.0206

Kapampangan

pam

476

23

0.0205

Faroese

fo

474

23

0.0204

Ilokano

ilo

472

22

0.0203

Romani

rmy

470

22

0.0202

Ido

io

468

22

0.0201

Maltese

mt

467

22

0.0201

Novial

nov

467

22

0.0201

Bavarian

bar

466

22

0.0200

Sardinian

sc

462

22

0.0199

Megrelian

xmf

449

21

0.0193

Tatar

tt

447

21

0.0192

West Frisian

fy

446

21

0.0192

Interlingua

ia

435

21

0.0187

Kurdish

ku

434

21

0.0187

Macedonian

mk

432

21

0.0186

Newar

new

430

20

0.0185

Kirghiz

ky

425

20

0.0183

Sater Frisian

stq

424

20

0.0182

Raeto Romance

rm

421

20

0.0181

Chabacano

cbk

420

20

0.0181

Belarusian (Taraškievica)

be-tarask

419

20

0.0180

Samogitian

bat-smg

416

20

0.0179

Dimli

diq

416

20

0.0179

Shona

sn

413

20

0.0178

Low German / Low Saxon

nds

411

20

0.0177

Upper Sorbian

hsb

409

19

0.0176

Võro

fiu-vro

404

19

0.0174

Punjabi

pnb

404

19

0.0174

Norwegian Nynorsk

nn

399

19

0.0172

Wu

wuu

387

18

0.0166

Jakutian

sah

383

18

0.0165

Welsh

cy

378

18

0.0163

Sicilian

scn

378

18

0.0163

Mirandese

mwl

366

17

0.0157

Mazanderani

mzn

364

17

0.0157

Javanese

jv

347

17

0.0149

Piedmontese

pms

337

16

0.0145

How can we then estimate whether or not a given language community on Wikipedia has a high or a low relative tendency to seek information on the Shoah, contained in the encyclopedia?

Image 3 provides a clue to the simple statistical regression methodology, used to compare the assumed relative size of the different language communities on Wikipedia (data from PEW or alternatively, Table 4) and the language distribution of the download statistics for the main Shoah article.

Image 3: The relative size of the Wikipedia language community (x-axis, based on the annual PEW download data) and the share of the language community in the downloads of the main Wikipedia Shoah article in the last 20 days
The relative size of the Wikipedia language community
x-axis: % share of the language community in all global downloads of Wikipedia (based on PEW annual download data)

y-axis: % share of the language community in all global downloads of the Shoah article on Wikipedia

Such comparisons of the Shoah article download figures are also made vis-à-vis the download statistics of the respective Wikipedia article on Israel. In each case, the answers to these comparisons are relatively simple: considering the size of the language community, or considering the revealed interest in information about the state of Israel, is there a relatively high or a relatively low tendency to acquire Shoah knowledge and awareness?

The multivariate analysis of our data

We also investigated the blockades against Shoah knowledge and awareness, emerging from our national library holdings data by means of standard cross-country social science analysis. Are the data, documented in our flagship statistical table (Table 6) and choropleth map of the worldwide national library holdings of Shoah titles (Image 6), determined in any way by standard indicators of politics and economics of the nations of the earth?86

Our investigations built on the data already used in an earlier contribution to this journal by the present author.87 These national background data are fully and freely available in machine-readable format.88 The national background data used in this essay were also amply discussed at length in the available literature.89 The methodology uses standard statistical techniques, well established in cross-national data analysis: partial correlation and standard ordinary least square (OLS) multiple regression.90 The statistical software used was the IBM SPSS Version 24, made available to the author by Innsbruck University, Austria.91

Results

We will now proceed to our results.

Results based on nationwide union catalogues of libraries

Table 5 summarizes the enormous differences in the numbers of titles on the Shoah in the national union catalogues around the world. Image 4 projects our results onto a world map. For reasons of visibility and clarity of the choropleth map, we ranked the data of Table 5 with the statistical program EXCEL. The United Kingdom is assigned rank 1, while Bulgaria, Egypt, India, and the Philippines are assigned rank 49 (countries with numerically identical results are assigned the same rank). The highest numerical value in our summarizing choropleth map is 49, and it means a high lack of Shoah awareness in the countrywide library system.

The global North-South and North-East divide in Shoah awareness, evident from our statistics, and to be seen at one glance in Image 4, is simply overwhelming.

Among the countries holding less than 100 titles in their combined entire countrywide library system, we find countries where considerable numbers of Jews were sent to the Nazi German death camps: Hungary, Finland, Slovenia, Serbia, Croatia, Latvia, Estonia, Lithuania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Northern Macedonia, Albania, Montenegro, and Bulgaria. In Croatia, Latvia, Estonia, Lithuania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Northern Macedonia, Albania, Montenegro, and Bulgaria, this number is even 10 or below. Equally distressing is the low interest in the Shoah in the Vatican, which holds only 11 items with the word Shoah in its library (see below), but to this day has Alfred Rosenberg’s edition of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion in its stacks (see also our special section on this, below).92 With 235 items, Turkey is the majority-Muslim country with the largest library holdings on the subject.

Table 5: Items in the nationwide library union catalogues of the world with the word Shoah (Latin alphabet) in the title

Library catalogue

Number of items with the title word or keyword Shoah

United Kingdom

52,283

Canada

4,648

Luxembourg

4,613

Germany – North Rhine-Westphalia

3,734

Germany – Berlin State

2,633

Czech Republic

2,462

Germany – Lower Saxony, Saxony-Anhalt, Thuringia, Hamburg, Bremen, Schleswig-Holstein, and Mecklenburg-Vorpommern

2,142

Italy

2,016

Germany – Bavaria

1,931

Israel

1,430

Switzerland

1,336

Austria

1,121

Germany – Hesse

1,113

Germany – Baden-Württemberg

1,008

France

819

European Commission Libraries

676

Australia

673

Belgium

457

Denmark

256

Sweden

238

Turkey

235

New Zealand

203

Japan

202

China

131

Poland

131

Hungary

98

Finland

73

Slovenia

59

Korea (South)

38

Serbia

24

Brazil

15

Iceland

11

Portugal

11

Vatican

11

Croatia

9

Algeria

8

Jordan

8

Latvia

8

Estonia

6

Tunisia

6

Lithuania

4

Bosnia and Herzegovina

3

Northern Macedonia

3

Saudi Arabia plus 24 Arab countries – Aruc Arab Union Catalogue

3

Thailand

2

Albania

1

Central America (Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, and Panama)

1

Costa Rica

1

Malta

1

Montenegro

1

Bulgaria

0

Egypt

0

India

0

Philippines

0

Image 4: The lack of Shoah awareness – data from the national union catalogues

The lack of Shoah awareness - data from the national union catalogues

Results based on the library catalogues of national libraries

Our findings from the holdings of national libraries reveal even more encompassing results. We should note here that several of the national libraries, ranking well in our Table 6, owe their strong position to the inclusion of electronic scientific databases like Ebsco Host93 in their library system and also their catalogues. This is especially true for the enormous wealth of literature available to users of the national libraries of Luxembourg, Denmark, and Saudi Arabia. For adherents of a library culture, still based on the classical printed book, this trend may be disturbing, but in our electronic age there is no alternative to such an inclusion of electronic books in our result lists. At the end of the day, these electronic opportunities now partially available at libraries also imply cracks in the relative or even absolute walls of ignorance vis-à-vis the Shoah, otherwise existing in the library systems of such countries as Egypt and Saudi Arabia.94

One of the most breathtaking aspects of Table 6 is the fact that users of the King Fahad National Library in Saudi Arabia, thanks to our electronic age, now have almost 110 times more titles available on the Shoah than the pontiff, the cardinals, the bishops, and the more than 2,800 bureaucrats working for the global administration of the Roman Catholic Church in the Vatican95 via their central library, the Vatican Library, and that the relatively still poor Caribbean country of Jamaica, with its world-class universities, offers in its national library 13 times as many titles on the Shoah as the Vatican Library! The National Library of Egypt, the Biblioteca Alexandrina, now already has eight times as many titles on the Shoah at its readers’ disposal as the Vatican.

Table 6: Items available in the national libraries of the countries of the world with the word Shoah (Latin alphabet) in the title

National library

Number of items with the word Shoah in the title

Luxembourg

4,613

Denmark

2,345

Israel

2,290

United States

1,493

Saudi Arabia

1,208

United Kingdom

1,094

Latvia

1,004

Austria

744

Germany

596

Poland

229

Jamaica

146

Italy

128

Egypt

84

Finland

83

France

77

Belgium

65

Switzerland

64

Netherlands

61

Monaco

55

Sweden

54

Canada

47

Australia

45

Romania

44

Czech Republic

33

Japan

28

Spain

21

Korea (South)

19

Slovak Republic

14

Hungary

13

Singapore

13

China

12

Russia

12

Slovenia

12

Iceland

11

Vatican

11

Serbia

9

Argentina

8

Portugal

8

Portugal

8

Liechtenstein

7

Moldova

7

Irish Republic

6

Ukraine

6

Belarus

5

Brazil

5

New Zealand

5

Lithuania

4

Turkey

4

Colombia

3

Norway

3

Taiwan – China

3

Chile

2

Croatia

2

Trinidad and Tobago

2

Albania

1

Bosnia and Herzegovina

1

Costa Rica

1

Cyprus

1

Ecuador

1

Greece

1

Iran

1

Malaysia

1

Panama

1

Azerbaijan

0

Bahamas

0

Bhutan

0

Cuba

0

India

0

Indonesia

0

Iraq

0

Kazakhstan

0

Kuwait

0

Maldives

0

Malta

0

Mexico

0

Namibia

0

Oman

0

Peru

0

Thailand

0

Uruguay

0

Venezuela

0

Image 5 reveals a small but highly politically relevant incident: brave librarians at the National Library of Iran in Tehran dared to catalogue a single work with the word Shoah in the title into the library system,96 all the Holocaust denial by the mullahs’ regime notwithstanding.97

Image 5: A single library holding of a book with “Shoah” in the title in the National Library of Iran

National Library of Iran

Image 6, using the same methodology as Image 5, described above, reveals again the dearth of materials on the Shoah available to the users of the national libraries in the global South and East. With the exceptions of Saudi Arabia and Egypt, one must really speak of walls of ignorance vis-à-vis the Shoah, even in countries which are solidly anchored in the economic and political system of the West or which aspire to be in the coming years, such as Serbia, Portugal, Liechtenstein, Moldova, Irish Republic, Ukraine, Brazil, New Zealand, Lithuania, Turkey, Norway, Croatia, Trinidad and Tobago, Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Cyprus, Greece, and Malta where the national library in each case holds less than 10 titles on the Shoah.

Image 6: The lack of Shoah awareness – data from the national library catalogues

The lack of Shoah awareness

The fairly encompassing national library data will also be used in our multivariate analysis of the subject.

Results based on the library catalogues of legislative assembly libraries

Table 7 summarizes the availability of Shoah-related titles in the libraries of the legislative assemblies around the world. What scholars, students, and other library users do is always one thing, while what legislators and their staff read and what they do not read is another. In our list, three parliamentary libraries excel – the libraries of the European Parliament, the Canadian Parliamentary Library, and – of course – the Library of Congress in Washington, DC. The European Parliamentary Library is extremely well equipped with all sorts of electronic resources and must be regarded as one of the most complete libraries for history and the social sciences in Europe.

Moving down our list, we find over 200 items in the Swedish parliamentary library and over 100 items in the two parliamentary libraries of Italy (we added their results together). Germany and Japan, the other former Axis powers, have less than 100 Shoah items in their parliamentary libraries, and in Austria, the country of birth of Adolf Hitler, Adolf Eichmann, Franz Stangl, Franz Novak, Ernst Kaltenbrunner, Odilo Globocnik, Alois Brunner, and countless other Nazi murderers,98 the parliamentary library lists only 50 items on the Shoah. This is in sharp contrast to the high Shoah knowledge and awareness reflected in the data on the other Austrian academic and other libraries, documented in Table 6 and Image 5. The results for the legislative assembly libraries in Spain, Brazil, Switzerland, Finland, and Australia are depressing, and at least suggest the hypothesis that in the political system of these countries, solidly integrated economically and politically with the rest of the West, the issues of the Shoah play only a secondary parliamentary role or practically no parliamentary role at all (Table 7).

Table 7: Availability of items on the Shoah in the legislative assembly libraries of the world

Country

Number of items with the word Shoah in the title

European Union

3,044

Canada

1,567

United States

1,492

Sweden

225

Italy

123

Germany

93

Austria

50

Japan

29

Spain

12

Brazil

5

Switzerland

2

Finland

1

Australia

0

Chile

0

Georgia

0

Mexico

0

Results based on the library catalogues of international organizations

Just as in the library systems considered before, there are huge differences in the number of Shoahrelated titles in the libraries of international organizations. The United Nations Economic Commission for Latin America in Santiago, well-known for its dedicated analytical work on Latin American and global social and economic problems,99 outdoes all the UN-related libraries and the other libraries under consideration in Table 8. Its extremely well-organized connectedness to electronic databases of all sorts makes its library a truly global one. At the same time, the hierarchy of the library holdings about the Shoah among the different UN organizations is revealing and even astonishing, and indeed tells us something about the presence of a strong anti-Israeli lobby in several UN organizations and bodies, including UNESCO and the UN ESCWA in Beirut.100 The Shoah-related holdings at the main UN library in Geneva are more inclusive than those at the center of the United Nations in New York. Our analysis also implies something about the lack of priorities set by the European Commission and the Council of Europe to uphold the memory of the six million victims of the Shoah: the UN ECA in Addis Ababa and the Asian Development Bank have more Shoah-related titles in their library than the main European Commission Library in Brussels. Even more disappointing are the results for the Council of Europe101 and NATO.

Table 8: Libraries of the international organizations – number of items with the word Shoah in the title

Library catalogue

number of items with the word „Shoah” in the title

UN ECLAC, Santiago

12,196

United Nations, Geneva

2,460

United Nations, New York

2,438

UN ECA, Addis Ababa

1,664

Asian Development Bank

1,502

European Union

676

International Labour Organization

202

World Bank and IMF

172

Council of Europe

16

UNESCO Digital Library

13

NATO

2

OSCE Academy Bishkek

0

UN ESCWA, Beirut

0

African Union

0

Results based on the OCLC Worldcat

We first show the ranking of the global library circulation of Shoahrelated books. Of all the available global titles on the subject, we have chosen the three most widely circulated ones for our further analysis.102 Future research might produce more exhaustive lists, but the tendencies evident from these three most widely circulated volumes will certainly repeat themselves and already reveal a solid and constant negative pattern. Library knowledge and awareness about the Shoah is geographically highly concentrated in English-speaking North America, in Europe, and in the few other English-speaking academic cultures of Australia, New Zealand, and Southern Africa. Adding to this the libraries of the newly industrialized countries of East and Southeast Asia, you arrive at 98% to 99% of the global library holdings on the Shoah.

Image 7: Searching for global library presence of the most widely circulated Shoah books with the open-access version of OCLC Classify

Shoah books

The global geographical results for the three highest-ranked books and the most widely circulated peer-reviewed journal in the field, the journal Holocaust and Genocide Studies (Oxford University Press, see methodology section, above), are the following:

Table 9: Results based on OCLC Worldcat – absolute numbers

Title

Hitler’s Willing Executioners: Ordinary Germans and the Holocaust

The Origins of Nazi Genocide: From Euthanasia to the Final Solution

Hitler’s Furies: German Women in the Nazi Killing Fields

Holocaust and Genocide Studies

Author

by Goldhagen, Daniel Jonah

by Friedlander, Henry

by Lower, Wendy,

Oxford University Press (journal)

Holdings

4,768

2,786

2,738

1,023

Vicinity of < 3,800 km from Winnipeg, CND

2,169

1,336

1,333

734

Vicinity of < 1,750 km from Brussels, Belgium

270

147

158

227

Vicinity of < 3,800 km from Perth, Australia

84

38

61

19

Vicinity of < 800 km from Wellington, NZ

22

7

33

4

Vicinity of < 4,000 km from Cape Town, South Africa

12

10

5

13

Vicinity of < 3,000 km from Hong Kong, China

12

2

5

9

Subtotal

2,569

1,540

1,595

1,006

Rest of the world

31

29

7

17

Total analyzed holdings

2,600

1,569

1,602

1,023

In relative terms, the global percentage distribution is the following:

Table 10: Results based on OCLC Worldcat – geographical percentage distribution of global holdings

Title

Hitler’s Willing Executioners: Ordinary Germans and the Holocaust

The Origins of Nazi Genocide: From Euthanasia to the Final Solution

Hitler’s Furies: German Women in the Nazi Killing Fields

Holocaust and Genocide Studies

Author

by Goldhagen, Daniel Jonah

by Friedlander, Henry

by Lower, Wendy

Oxford University Press (journal)

Vicinity of < 3,800 km from Winnipeg, CND

83.42

85.15

83.21

71.75

Vicinity of < 1,750 km from Brussels, Belgium

10.38

9.37

9.86

22.19

Vicinity of < 3,800 km from Perth, Australia

3.23

2.42

3.81

1.86

Vicinity of < 800 km from Wellington, NZ

0.85

0.45

2.06

0.39

Vicinity of < 4,000 km from Cape Town, South Africa

0.46

0.64

0.31

1.27

Vicinity of < 3,000 km from Hong Kong, China

0.46

0.13

0.31

0.88

Subtotal

98.81

98.15

99.56

98.34

Rest of the world

1.19

1.85

0.44

1.66

Total analyzed holdings

100.00

100.00

100.00

100.00

Almost like in a mirror, we now look at the other side of these lamentable realities; the dearth of library holdings on the Shoah in the global South and East is again documented in the following table:

Table 11: Results based on OCLC Worldcat – holdings in Africa, Asia, and Latin America

Title

Hitler’s Willing Executioners: Ordinary Germans and the Holocaust

The Origins of Nazi Genocide: From Euthanasia to the Final Solution

Hitler’s Furies: German Women in the Nazi Killing Fields

Holocaust and Genocide Studies

Author

by Goldhagen, Daniel Jonah

by Friedlander, Henry

by Lower, Wendy

Oxford University Press (journal)

Vicinity of < 5,700 km from Campo Grande, Brazil

10

4

0

3

Vicinity of < 3,600 km from Yaoundé, Cameroon

2

4

1

3

Vicinity of < 3,700 km from Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia

2

0

2

2

Results based on Wikipedia statistics about downloads of the main Wikipedia Shoah article in 136 languages

In the following, we will analyze whether or not at least download figures from the freely available internet encyclopedia Wikipedia in the different languages of the world suggest a countervailing trend. One can argue in principle that modern academic publishing produces very expensive products, and that these products – like the ones analyzed in the preceding chapters – are beyond the reach of poorer countries. And yet this argument partially neglects the fact that many titles are now open-access publications, or are at least available via lower-cost subscriptions for libraries in the developing world, especially in special document packages. The company Ebsco Host is at the forefront of such efforts to overcome the digital divide.103

Apart from the more than 9,000 global daily downloads of the English-language Wikipedia article on the Shoah, there are now more than 1,000 daily downloads in Spanish, Portuguese, German, Japanese, French, Russian, and Italian. And at least the Spanish, Portuguese, and French languages, just like English, are being spoken widely in the developing world. In addition, the more than 100 daily downloads in Chinese, Persian, Arabic, Indonesian, Korean, and Vietnamese have a high relevance for strategies to think about the diffusion of Shoah knowledge and awareness in the developing countries.

Table 12: Downloads of the main Shoah article on Wikipedia in the different languages of the world

Language code

Name of the language in English

Title of the Wikipedia article on the Shoah

20 days of downloads, last 20 days of June 2019

Daily average

% of global Shoah- article downloads

en

English

The Holocaust

194,534

9,264

36.5763

es

Spanish

Holocausto

58,987

2,809

11.0907

pt

Portuguese

Holocausto

41,463

1,974

7.7959

de

German

Holocaust

40,668

1,937

7.6464

ja

Japanese

ホロコースト

24,774

1,180

4.6580

fr

French

Shoah

24,060

1,146

4.5238

ru

Russian

Холокост

22,689

1,080

4.2660

it

Italian

Olocausto

22,661

1,079

4.2607

zh

Chinese

猶太人大屠殺

8,927

425

1.6785

nl

Dutch

Holocaust

8,870

422

1.6677

fa

Persian

هولوکاست

8,703

414

1.6363

ar

Arabic

الهولوكوست

7,189

342

1.3517

pl

Polish

Zagłada Żydów

7,175

342

1.3490

id

Indonesian

Holokaus

6,079

289

1.1430

ro

Romanian

Holocaust

5,670

270

1.0661

he

Hebrew

השואה

5,065

241

0.9523

fi

Finnish

Holokausti

3,429

163

0.6447

cs

Czech

Holokaust

3,030

144

0.5697

ko

Korean

홀로코스트

2,687

128

0.5052

el

Greek

Ολοκαύτωμα

2,660

127

0.5001

hu

Hungarian

Holokauszt

2,623

125

0.4932

uk

Ukrainian

Голокост

2,270

108

0.4268

vi

Vietnamese

Holocaust

2,164

103

0.4069

sv

Swedish

Förintelsen

2,095

100

0.3939

bg

Bulgarian

Холокост

1,988

95

0.3738

no

Norwegian

Holocaust

1,902

91

0.3576

sk

Slovak

Holokaust

1,458

69

0.2741

th

Thai

ฮอโลคอสต์

1,438

68

0.2704

sr

Serbian

Холокауст

1,330

63

0.2501

tr

Turkish

Holokost

1,253

60

0.2356

ca

Catalan

Holocaust

1,181

56

0.2221

da

Danish

Holocaust

1,156

55

0.2174

hr

Croatian

Holokaust

1,120

53

0.2106

simple

Simple English

The Holocaust

983

47

0.1848

hi

Hindi

यहूदी नरसंहार

797

38

0.1499

ka

Georgian

ჰოლოკოსტი

766

36

0.1440

lt

Lithuanian

Holokaustas

740

35

0.1391

ta

Tamil

பெரும் இன அழிப்பு

597

28

0.1122

sq

Albanian

Holokausti

455

22

0.0855

bn

Bengali

ইহুদি গণহত্যা

363

17

0.0683

lv

Latvian

Holokausts

348

17

0.0654

sl

Slovenian

Holokavst

306

15

0.0575

tl

Tagalog

Holocaust

292

14

0.0549

et

Estonian

Holokaust

272

13

0.0511

hy

Armenian

Հոլոքոստ

259

12

0.0487

sh

Serbo-Croatian

Holokaust

247

12

0.0464

mk

Macedonian

Холокауст

220

10

0.0414

ur

Urdu

مرگ انبوہ

192

9

0.0361

az

Azerbaijani

Holokost

165

8

0.0310

ms

Malay

Holokus

151

7

0.0284

af

Afrikaans

Holocaust

141

7

0.0265

arz

Egyptian Arabic

هولوكوست

131

6

0.0246

ml

Malayalam

ഹോളോകോസ്റ്റ്

111

5

0.0209

sw

Swahili

Maangamizi makuu dhidi ya Wayahudi wa Ulaya

107

5

0.0201

zh-yue

Cantonese

猶太人大屠殺

92

4

0.0173

uz

Uzbek

Holokost

85

4

0.0160

gl

Galician

Holocausto

77

4

0.0145

eo

Esperanto

Holokaŭsto

72

3

0.0135

mr

Marathi

होलोकॉस्ट

71

3

0.0133

mn

Mongolian

Холокост

67

3

0.0126

azb

Southern Azerbaijani

هولوکاست

65

3

0.0122

bs

Bosnian

Holokaust

65

3

0.0122

eu

Basque

Holokaustoa

65

3

0.0122

my

Burmese

ဂျူး သုတ်သင်ရေး စီမံကိန်း

62

3

0.0117

is

Icelandic

Helförin

59

3

0.0111

yi

Yiddish

חורבן אייראפע

56

3

0.0105

kk

Kazakh

Холокост

53

3

0.0100

be

Belarusian

Халакост

51

2

0.0096

nn

Norwegian Nynorsk

Holocaust

47

2

0.0088

cbk

Chabacano

ھۆلۆکۆست

46

2

0.0086

ba

Bashkir

Холокост

45

2

0.0085

als

Alemannic

Völkermord an den europäischen Juden

43

2

0.0081

fiu-vro

Võro

Holokaust

40

2

0.0075

ang

Angal

Eallbærnet

39

2

0.0073

bar

Bavarian

Holocaust

39

2

0.0073

pam

Kapampangan

Holocaust

39

2

0.0073

rm

Raeto-Romance

Holocaust

39

2

0.0073

rw

Rwandi

Itsembabwoko ry’Abayahudi

39

2

0.0073

mzn

Mazanderani

هولوکاست

36

2

0.0068

ga

Irish

Uileloscadh

34

2

0.0064

xmf

Megrelian

ჰოლოკოსტი

34

2

0.0064

arc

Aramaic

ܩܛܠܥܡܐ ܝܗܘܕܝܐ

33

2

0.0062

sco

Scots

Holocaust

33

2

0.0062

an

Aragonese

Holocausto

32

2

0.0060

kn

Kannada

ಹೋಲೋಕಾಸ್ಟ್

32

2

0.0060

nds

Low German / Low Saxon

Schoah

32

2

0.0060

bxr

Buriat (Russia)

Холокост

31

1

0.0058

mhr

Mari

Холокост

31

1

0.0058

oc

Occitan

Olocaust

31

1

0.0058

pnb

Punjabi

ہولو کاسٹ

31

1

0.0058

rmy

Romani

Holokausto

31

1

0.0058

cy

Welsh

Yr Holocost

30

1

0.0056

ky

Kirghiz

Холокост

30

1

0.0056

la

Latin

Soa

30

1

0.0056

rue

Carpatho-Russinic

Голокауст

30

1

0.0056

sah

Yakutian

Холокост

30

1

0.0056

hif

Fidshi-Hindi

The Holocaust

29

1

0.0055

lad

Ladino / Judeo-Español

Olokósto

29

1

0.0055

mt

Maltese

L-Olokawst

29

1

0.0055

nov

Novial

Li Holokauste

29

1

0.0055

scn

Sicilian

Olucaustu

29

1

0.0055

cv

Chuvash

Холокост

28

1

0.0053

new

Newar

होलोकस्ट

28

1

0.0053

wuu

Wu

犹太人大屠杀

28

1

0.0053

am

Amharic

ሆሎኮስት

27

1

0.0051

ast

Asturian

Holocaustu

27

1

0.0051

hsb

Upper Sorbian

Holocaust

27

1

0.0051

lb

Luxembourgish

Holocaust

27

1

0.0051

pa

Panjabi / Punjabi

ਯਹੂਦੀ ਘੱਲੂਘਾਰਾ

27

1

0.0051

pms

Piedmontese

Olocàust

27

1

0.0051

sc

Sardinian

Olocàustu

27

1

0.0051

fo

Faroese

Holocaust

26

1

0.0049

gd

Scottish Gaelic

Uile-losgadh

26

1

0.0049

kw

Cornish

Loskaberth

26

1

0.0049

so

Somalia

Holokost

26

1

0.0049

mwl

Mirandese

Houlocausto

25

1

0.0047

diq

Dimli

Holokost

24

1

0.0045

fy

West Frisian

Holokaust

24

1

0.0045

ku

Kurdish

Holokost

24

1

0.0045

lez

Lesgish

Холокост

24

1

0.0045

stq

Sater Frisian

Holocaust

24

1

0.0045

zh-min-nan

Minnan

Holocaust

24

1

0.0045

br

Breton

Loskaberzh

23

1

0.0043

jv

Javanese

Holocaust

23

1

0.0043

sn

Shona

Rushigido

23

1

0.0043

tt

Tatar

Holokost

23

1

0.0043

war

Waray / Samar-Leyte Visayan

An Holokausto

23

1

0.0043

bat-smg

Samogitian

Huoluokausts

22

1

0.0041

ilo

Ilokano

Holokausto

22

1

0.0041

jam

Jamaican Patois

Di Olokaas

22

1

0.0041

ia

Interlingua

Holocausto

21

1

0.0039

io

Ido

Holokausto

21

1

0.0039

qu

Quechua

Ulukawstu

21

1

0.0039

kbp

Kabiye

Soowa (Shoah)

20

1

0.0038

gv

Manx

Yn Deherree

18

1

0.0034

be-tarask

Belarusian (Taraškievica)

Галакост

17

1

0.0032

Table 13 now applies our methodology to compare the percentage shares of the general global annual Wikipedia pageviews (PEW data, see methodology section) by a specific language group and the percentages of a given language group of the global Shoah article downloads. Compared to the presumed size of the Wikipedia user community, the Portuguese, Spanish, German, Italian, Persian, and French speaking Wikipedia users had a higher tendency to download the main Shoah Wikipedia article. Results for the Wikipedia downloads in Japanese, Turkish, Russian, Chinese, Swedish, Polish, Korean, Ukrainian, Czech, Finnish, English, Indonesian, Arabic, and Dutch (in descending order) were below the trend.

Table 13: Percentage of general global annual Wikipedia pageviews and percentage of global Shoah article downloads over the last 20 days among the major global Wikipedia communities

Language

% of global Wikipedia pageviews in 2015

% of global Shoah article downloads – last 20 days

Trend – in %

Residual – in %

Portuguese

2.13

8.44

2.79

5.65

Spanish

7.44

12.00

6.89

5.11

German

6.77

8.27

6.36

1.91

Italian

3.33

4.61

3.71

0.90

Persian

0.47

1.77

1.50

0.27

French

4.79

4.89

4.84

0.06

Dutch

1.04

1.80

1.94

-0.14

Arabic

0.83

1.46

1.78

-0.32

Indonesian

0.83

1.24

1.78

-0.55

English

50.60

39.58

40.20

-0.62

Finnish

0.42

0.70

1.46

-0.76

Czech

0.42

0.62

1.46

-0.85

Ukrainian

0.36

0.46

1.42

-0.96

Korean

0.57

0.55

1.58

-1.04

Polish

1.82

1.46

2.55

-1.09

Swedish

0.62

0.43

1.62

-1.20

Chinese

2.55

1.82

3.11

-1.29

Russian

6.25

4.62

5.96

-1.35

Turkish

0.94

0.25

1.86

-1.61

Japanese

7.81

5.04

7.17

-2.13

Table 14 is based on the same methodology as Table 13, but estimates the size of the Wikipedia language community by the downloads of the Wikipedia article on the encyclopedia itself. Here results for the Shoah articles in Spanish, Portuguese, German, French, Italian, Russian, Japanese, Dutch, Persian, Arabic, Indonesian, Hebrew, Polish, Chinese, and Czech are encouraging and above the trend, while the results for the articles in English, Korean, Vietnamese, Turkish, Bengali, Hindi, Simple English, Swedish, and Norwegian are below the trend.

Table 14: Percentage of general global annual Wikipedia pageviews and percentage of global Shoah article downloads over the last 20 days among different global Wikipedia communities, estimated by the number of Wikipedia article downloads on Wikipedia itself

Wikipedia average

% of global Wiki traffic

Trend

Residual

Residual in % of the Wiki download share

Shoah downloads – daily average

% of global Shoah downloads

Portuguese

731

0.66

0.71

7.09

1,072.90

1,974

7.80

Romanian

84

0.08

0.38

0.69

915.14

270

1.07

Spanish

3,231

2.92

2.00

9.09

311.55

2,809

11.09

Italian

1,342

1.21

1.03

3.24

267.00

1,079

4.26

French

1,501

1.36

1.11

3.42

252.03

1,146

4.52

Indonesian

298

0.27

0.49

0.66

243.99

289

1.14

Dutch

543

0.49

0.61

1.05

215.16

422

1.67

Hebrew

259

0.23

0.47

0.49

208.00

241

0.95

Persian

559

0.50

0.62

1.02

201.10

414

1.64

German

3,494

3.15

2.14

5.51

174.68

1,937

7.65

Finnish

153

0.14

0.41

0.23

168.57

163

0.64

Greek

91

0.08

0.38

0.12

147.05

127

0.50

Arabic

563

0.51

0.62

0.73

143.32

342

1.35

Russian

4,012

3.62

2.40

1.86

51.41

1,080

4.27

Hungarian

175

0.16

0.42

0.07

44.52

125

0.49

Ukrainian

106

0.10

0.39

0.04

41.35

108

0.43

Polish

1,196

1.08

0.95

0.40

36.99

342

1.35

Japanese

5,261

4.75

3.05

1.61

33.90

1,180

4.66

Chinese

1,946

1.76

1.34

0.34

19.43

425

1.68

Czech

426

0.38

0.55

0.02

4.48

144

0.57

English

72,320

65.30

37.66

-1.08

-1.65

9,264

36.58

Bulgarian

86

0.08

0.38

0.00

-4.55

95

0.37

Swedish

356

0.32

0.52

-0.12

-38.11

100

0.39

Norwegian

257

0.23

0.47

-0.11

-46.46

91

0.36

Korean

2,162

1.95

1.45

-0.94

-48.32

128

0.51

Vietnamese

1,088

0.98

0.89

-0.49

-49.61

103

0.41

Turkish

652

0.59

0.67

-0.43

-73.66

60

0.24

Thai

154

0.14

0.41

-0.14

-101.89

68

0.27

Simple English

257

0.23

0.47

-0.28

-120.87

47

0.18

Hindi

313

0.28

0.49

-0.34

-121.84

38

0.15

Serbian

111

0.10

0.39

-0.14

-139.81

63

0.25

Slovak

64

0.06

0.37

-0.09

-157.87

69

0.27

Danish

105

0.09

0.39

-0.17

-179.45

55

0.22

Bengali

233

0.21

0.45

-0.39

-182.62

17

0.07

Catalan

76

0.07

0.37

-0.15

-219.10

56

0.22

Croatian

79

0.07

0.37

-0.16

-229.07

53

0.21

Georgian

107

0.10

0.39

-0.24

-253.30

36

0.14

Tagalog

153

0.14

0.41

-0.36

-258.41

14

0.05

Lithuanian

67

0.06

0.37

-0.23

-377.45

35

0.14

Slovenian

84

0.08

0.38

-0.32

-420.64

15

0.06

Uzbek

85

0.08

0.38

-0.36

-470.59

4

0.02

Azerbaijani

72

0.07

0.37

-0.34

-521.28

8

0.03

Tamil

49

0.04

0.36

-0.25

-557.02

28

0.11

Estonian

52

0.05

0.36

-0.31

-651.50

13

0.05

Basque

60

0.05

0.36

-0.35

-651.64

3

0.01

Swahili

56

0.05

0.36

-0.34

-670.76

5

0.02

Malayalam

56

0.05

0.36

-0.34

-675.02

5

0.02

Afrikaans

50

0.04

0.36

-0.33

-740.05

7

0.03

Statistics about downloads of Wikipedia Israel articles compared to the downloads of the Wikipedia Shoah articles

In Table 15 and in Image 8, we analyze the attention received by Israel and the Shoah by global publics on Wikipedia. On a daily basis, more than 11,000 global readers now read the English-language article on Israel, followed by more than 2,000 in Russian, Spanish, Polish, and German, and more than 1,000 in Hebrew, French, Japanese, Arabic, Chinese, Portuguese, and Italian.

Given these download figures of the two analyzed Wikipedia articles in different language versions, it is now interesting to see which global audiences had a comparatively high download pattern of the Wikipedia Shoah article and which language versions received a relatively low download pattern, compared to the audiences of the Wikipedia article on Israel. Following the methodology, already explained in Image 3, we put the readership of the Wikipedia articles on Israel on the x-axis and the readership of the Wikipedia article on the y-axis. Ideally, rates of attention should be about equally high. Such a trend line would unequivocally reflect the words of Israel’s Declaration of Independence, which highlights that the foundation of the state of Israel is the answer to the culmination of two millennia of anti-Semitism in the Shoah:

The catastrophe which recently befell the Jewish people the massacre of millions of Jews in Europe was another clear demonstration of the urgency of solving the problem of its homelessness by re-establishing in Eretz-Israel the Jewish State, which would open the gates of the homeland wide to every Jew and confer upon the Jewish people the status of a fully privileged member of the community of nations. Survivors of the Nazi holocaust in Europe, as well as Jews from other parts of the world, continued to migrate to Eretz-Israel, undaunted by difficulties, restrictions and dangers, and never ceased to assert their right to a life of dignity, freedom and honest toil in their national homeland.104

Tentatively, we might say that downloads of the Portuguese, Spanish, English, German, Italian, Japanese, Dutch, Romanian, French, and Indonesian Wikipedia articles on the Shoah were above the trend line while downloads of the Polish, Russian, Arabic, Chinese, and Persian-language Wikipedia articles on the Shoah were below the trend line.

Table 15: Wikipedia articles on Israel and on the Shoah in the different languages of the world

English-language name

Language code

Wikipedia title of the article on Israel

% of global downloads of Israel article

20-day downloads of Israel article

Daily average of downloads of Israel article

% of global downloads of the Shoah article

Trend value, predicted by the Israel percentage

Residual

English

en

Israel

30.5223

247,838

11802

36.5763

35.0122

1.5641

Russian

ru

Израиль

7.4230

60,274

2870

4.2660

8.2865

-4.0205

Spanish

es

Israel

6.9507

56,439

2688

11.0907

7.7400

3.3507

Polish

pl

Izrael

6.3746

51,761

2465

1.3490

7.0734

-5.7244

German

de

Israel

5.7213

46,456

2212

7.6464

6.3175

1.3289

Hebrew

he

ישראל

4.2903

34,837

1659

0.9523

4.6620

-3.7096

French

fr

Israël

3.8592

31,336

1492

4.5238

4.1631

0.3606

Japanese

ja

イスラエル

3.4435

27,961

1331

4.6580

3.6822

0.9758

Arabic

ar

إسرائيل

3.2435

26,337

1254

1.3517

3.4508

-2.0991

Chinese

zh

以色列

3.1500

25,578

1218

1.6785

3.3427

-1.6642

Portuguese

pt

Israel

2.9723

24,135

1149

7.7959

3.1371

4.6588

Italian

it

Israele

2.8803

23,388

1114

4.2607

3.0306

1.2301

Other languages

other languages

xx

2.8520

23,158

1278,9

0.6141

2.9978

-2.3838

Persian

fa

اسرائیل

2.1824

17,721

844

1.6363

2.2231

-0.5868

Indonesian

id

Israel

1.2030

9,768

465

1.1430

1.0899

0.0531

Dutch

nl

Israël

1.0770

8,745

416

1.6677

0.9442

0.7236

Vietnamese

vi

Israel

1.0700

8,688

414

0.4069

0.9360

-0.5292

Czech

cs

Izrael

0.8051

6,537

311

0.5697

0.6295

-0.0598

Swedish

sv

Israel

0.8016

6,509

310

0.3939

0.6255

-0.2316

Romanian

ro

Israel

0.6963

5,654

269

1.0661

0.5037

0.5624

Thai

th

ประเทศอิสราเอล

0.6261

5,084

242

0.2704

0.4225

-0.1521

Hindi

hi

इज़राइल

0.5754

4,672

222

0.1499

0.3638

-0.2139

Korean

ko

이스라엘

0.5695

4,624

220

0.5052

0.3570

0.1483

Hungarian

hu

Izrael

0.5456

4,430

211

0.4932

0.3293

0.1639

Greek

el

Ισραήλ

0.5419

4,400

210

0.5001

0.3250

0.1751

Bulgarian

bg

Израел

0.5047

4,098

195

0.3738

0.2820

0.0918

Finnish

fi

Israel

0.4771

3,874

184

0.6447

0.2501

0.3946

Ukrainian

uk

Ізраїль

0.4751

3,858

184

0.4268

0.2478

0.1790

Serbian

sr

Израел

0.3660

2,972

142

0.2501

0.1216

0.1285

Turkish

tr

İsrail

0.3643

2,958

141

0.2356

0.1196

0.1160

Croatian

hr

Izrael

0.3461

2,810

134

0.2106

0.0985

0.1121

Norwegian

no

Israel

0.3149

2,557

122

0.3576

0.0624

0.2952

Bengali

bn

ইসরায়েল

0.2882

2,340

111

0.0683

0.0315

0.0367

Danish

da

Israel

0.2810

2,282

109

0.2174

0.0232

0.1941

Tagalog

tl

Israel

0.2585

2,099

100

0.0549

-0.0028

0.0577

Slovak

sk

Izrael

0.2567

2,084

99

0.2741

-0.0050

0.2791

Georgian

ka

ისრაელი

0.2166

1,759

84

0.1440

-0.0513

0.1953

Azerbaijani

az

İsrail

0.1632

1,325

63

0.0310

-0.1131

0.1441

Lithuanian

lt

Izraelis

0.1603

1,302

62

0.1391

-0.1164

0.2555

Simple English

simple

Israel

0.1512

1,228

58

0.1848

-0.1269

0.3118

Slovenian

sl

Izrael

0.1267

1,029

49

0.0575

-0.1553

0.2128

Catalan

ca

Israel

0.1165

946

45

0.2221

-0.1671

0.3892

Tamil

ta

இசுரேல்

0.0977

793

38

0.1122

-0.1889

0.3012

Serbo-Croatian

sh

Izrael

0.0935

759

36

0.0464

-0.1938

0.2402

Urdu

ur

اسرائیل

0.0893

725

35

0.0361

-0.1986

0.2347

Estonian

et

Iisrael

0.0881

715

34

0.0511

-0.2000

0.2512

Albanian

sq

Izraeli

0.0879

714

34

0.0855

-0.2002

0.2857

Armenian

hy

Իսրայել

0.0796

646

31

0.0487

-0.2099

0.2586

Malay

ms

Israel

0.0719

584

28

0.0284

-0.2187

0.2471

Latvian

lv

Izraēla

0.0676

549

26

0.0654

-0.2237

0.2891

Macedonian

mk

Израел

0.0489

397

19

0.0414

-0.2453

0.2867

Afrikaans

af

Israel

0.0317

257

12

0.0265

-0.2653

0.2918

Image 8 summarizes the findings of Table 15. With 844 daily downloads of the Israel article in Persian and 1,254 daily downloads of the Israel article in Arabic, a certain presence of the theme of Israel among Wikipedia audiences in the Middle East has now been achieved. Above all, the Portuguese- and Spanish-speaking audiences of Wikipedia in Latin America, Europe, and around the rest of the world have a high tendency nowadays to access the open-access and free information about the Shoah in electronic form. This is also an important finding for future strategies to keep the memory of the Shoah alive around the world.

Image 8: Percentage share of the major global languages of the Wikipedia downloads of the main Israel article and the main Shoah article in the encyclopedia

Percentage share of the major global languages

Cracks in the walls of ignorance? Shoah titles in the Arab world and Iran

Our assessment of the holdings of Arab libraries on the subject of the Shoah in our tables above was based on the following library catalogues:

  • Algeria national union catalogue
  • Egypt national union catalogue
  • Egypt national library
  • Iran national library
  • Iraq national library
  • Jordan national union catalogue
  • Kuwait national library
  • Oman national library
  • Saudi Arabia national library
  • Saudi Arabia plus 24 Arab countries Aruc Arab Union Catalogue national union catalogue
  • Tunisia national union catalogue
  • UN ESCWA Beirut library of the UN in the Arab world

In addition, we analyzed the subscriptions of the leading journal of Shoah studies, the Oxford University Press journal Holocaust and Genocide Studies in Arab libraries, integrated into the OCLC Worldcat. In general, holdings of a greater amount of Western literature are available from Morocco, Egypt, Lebanon, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, and the countries of the Gulf, moving in an eastward direction across the region. The library system of Tunisia, which must be praised for its openness to include an author like Georges Bensoussan,105 is unfortunately not yet included in the OCLC Worldcat.

Holocaust and Genocide Studies was available only at the American University Library in Cairo, Egypt; the Christian Notre Dame University in Louaizé, Lebanon; the American University of Iraq in Sulaimani, Iraq; the American University of Kuwait in Kuwait City; the Weill Cornell Medical College in Doha, Qatar; and at the United Arab Emirates University in Al Ain, UAE.

According to our hypothesis, one of the main reasons for the trajectory of still existing radicalism, hatred, and intolerance to be found in many parts of the Arab world is indeed the dire state of higher education, especially in the social sciences, in the region, which is also evident from our statistics. Our findings from international library network catalogues106 support the contention, already made in the United Nations Human Development Program’s Arab Human Development Report (2002), that Arabic culture is indeed especially closed to influences from other world regions and world cultures and that this self-inflicted isolation is among the real root causes of the societal stagnation of the region: The Arab world translates about 330 books annually, one fifth of the number that Greece translates. The cumulative total of translated books since the Caliph Maa’moun’s time (the ninth century) is about 100,000, almost the average that Spain translates in one year.”107

The Arabic Union catalogue Aruc offers startling insights into the biased distribution of Arabic library holdings, incompatible with tendencies of globalized modern science. The Arabic Union catalogue integrates a good part of the library holdings of the major research and government libraries in countries like Morocco, Algeria, Sudan, and the countries of the Arabian Peninsula.108 It especially offers insight into the thought and ideology patterns of “deep Arabia,” whose intellectual isolationism is also contrasted with the discernible positive library holding patterns in countries like Turkey or some Muslim countries of the Commonwealth, most notably Malaysia.

A typical consequence of such higher-education structures is the charter of the terrorist organization Hamas, which specifically refers to the Protocols of the Elders of Zion and blames Jews and Freemasons for the French Revolution, the Russian Revolution, and World Wars I and II.109 These infamous Protocols are available in at least 10 Arabic translations, published in 203 editions.110 Entering the Arabic-language search term for the Protocols of the Elders of Zion (روتوكولات حكماء صهيون ) reveals that in the Aruc union catalogue we find no less than 203 editions, present at many universities, research centers, and public administration libraries in the region.

Image 9: 203 editions of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion in the Arab union catalogue

Protocols of the Elders of Zion

Table 16 offers an astonishing insight into the presence of the Protocols in major academic and government libraries in the Arab world:

Table 16: Samples of different editions of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion and their presence in different Arabic public and academic libraries111

Country

Library

Bahrain

Library Resource Center Bahrain

Jordan

University of Jordan

Jordan

Yarmouk University

Jordan

Jordanian University for Science and Technology

Jordan

Yarmouk University

Saudi Arabia

Air Force Research Center

Saudi Arabia

King Abdul Aziz Public Library

Saudi Arabia

King Fahad Public Library

Saudi Arabia

King Fahad Security College – Prince Selman Library

Saudi Arabia

King Saoud University

Saudi Arabia

Medina Tiba University

Saudi Arabia

Omm Alqura University Library

Saudi Arabia

Prince Noora University – Girls College

Saudi Arabia

Technical and Vocational Training Corporation

Kuwait

National Library of Kuwait

Morocco

King Abdul Aziz Foundation

Oman

His Majesty’s Advisor Office Library

West Bank and Gaza

Njah National University

Qatar

Qatar National Library

United Arab Emirates

Emirates University

Cracks in the walls of ignorance? Library holdings in the Vatican and its universities and think tanks

Our analysis, based on the main library catalogue of the Vatican,112 revealed that in the entire Vatican library there are only 11 items available with the word Shoah in the title. The current leadership of the global Roman Catholic Church must be aware that – in the words of Julius Berman quoted earlier – “without education, we risk the history of the Holocaust being distorted and otherwise denied and those who were murdered being forgotten.” This lack of attention to the Shoah and its six million innocent victims, which reveals itself in the Vatican library holding figure, must be redressed immediately, and the dearth of information available to the pope, the cardinals, and all the bureaucracy working behind the walls of the Vatican State is made all the worse by the vast, devastating, and undeniable history of Catholic anti-Semitism, which played such a central role in the two millennia of historical events leading up to the Shoah.113 Table 17 also shows what a pontifical university could achieve today – the Pontifical Catholic University of Chile, Santiago, quite in contrast to the other compared libraries.

Table 17: Library holdings on the Shoah in the libraries of the Pontifical Universities in Rome, by international comparison

Library catalogue

Number of items with the word Shoah

Pontifical Catholic University of Chile, Santiago

1,461

Biblioteca “Paolo VI” – Pontificia Facoltà di Scienze dell’Educazione “Auxilium”

94

Pontifical Gregorian University “Gregoriana” (“Jesuits”)

72

Pontifical Salesian University “Salesianum”

32

Pontifical University of the Holy Cross “Santa Croce” (“Opus Dei”)

14

Pontifical Lateran University “Lateranum”

9

Pontifical University of St. Anthony “Antonianum”

9

Pontifical Xavierian University, Bogotá

9

Papal University John Paul II, Krakow, Poland

5

Pontifical University of St. Thomas Aquinas “Angelicum”

4

Pontifical Orient Institute

2

Pontifícia Universidade Católica do Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

1

Such structures even clearly contradict the official guidelines on Pontifical Universities and on the need to study the Shoah, set out by the Vatican itself. Pope Francis, in his often overlooked Papal Document on the Pontifical Universities, seems to be aware of the deficiencies of the libraries of his Papal Universities around the world;114 he had to remind them, after decades and even centuries of functioning, that the libraries must be equipped with an appropriate catalogue (i.e., 2019) and that they must allocate money to continually acquire books and journals (i.e., 2019). We assume that the pontifical exhortation was not an empty one, and that, read the other way, the mentioned document says nothing more and nothing less than that today, there are Pontifical University libraries which still (a) have no catalogue and (b) spend no money to order new books and journals

There is also a sentence in the Vatican declaration on the Shoah, entitled We Remember, which says in crystal-clear fashion that Roman Catholics have a duty to learn more about the reality of the Shoah:

The inhumanity with which the Jews were persecuted and massacred during this century is beyond the capacity of words to convey. All this was done to them for the sole reason that they were Jews. The very magnitude of the crime raises many questions. Historians, sociologists, political philosophers, psychologists, and theologians are all trying to learn more about the reality of the Shoah and its causes. Much scholarly study still remains to be done. But such an event cannot be fully measured by the ordinary criteria of historical research alone. It calls for a “moral and religious memory” and, particularly among Christians, a very serious reflection on what gave rise to it. The fact that the Shoah took place in Europe, that is, in countries of long-standing Christian civilization, raises the question of the relation between the Nazi persecution and the attitudes down the centuries of Christians towards the Jews.115

How do these words tally, then, with the results in the above Table 17, and how do such depressing results tally with the papal exhortations about libraries in the Papal Universities? Let us quote them here fully:

Article 53. In order to achieve its proper purposes, especially in regard to scientific research, each University or Faculty must have an adequate library, in keeping with the needs of the teachers and students. It must be correctly organized and equipped with an appropriate catalogue.

Article 54. Through an annual allotment of money, the library must continually acquire books, old and new, as well as the principal reviews, so as to be able effectively to serve research, teaching of the disciplines, instructional needs, and the practical exercises and seminars.

Article 55. The library must be headed by a trained librarian, assisted by a suitable council. The librarian participates opportunely in the Council of the University or Faculty.116

So, to this date, after two millennia of Catholic anti-Semitism and the Shoah, the Pontifical University of the Dominicans117 in Rome, for example, obviously thinks that offering just four titles to its students and academic staff from around the world on the Shoah is a sufficient thing to do. The Papal University in Krakow, Poland, located only around 50 kilometers away from the horrors of Auschwitz, offers its students and academic staff just five items with the word Shoah in the title. At the same time, as of August 19, 2019, the Vatican Library (see Image 10) still contained three titles by the chief ideologist of the NSDAP, Alfred Rosenberg, among them his infamous edition of the Protocols, along with four other editions of the Protocols in English, five in German, and so on.

Image 10: Alfred Rosenberg’s edition of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion in the Vatican Library (August 9, 2019)

Vatican Library

If the church really stands by its commitments given in the Second Vatican Council Declaration “Nostra Aetate,”118 then Shoah research must be a top priority of the Roman Catholic institutions, research institutes, universities, and other think tanks. As a small example of how the church leadership’s understanding of the processes of the Shoah and the Nazi dictatorship are to this day very deficient, we quote from “We Remember” itself, which states:

The Church in Germany replied by condemning racism. The condemnation first appeared in the preaching of some of the clergy, in the public teaching of the Catholic bishops, and in the writings of lay Catholic journalists. Already in February and March 1931, Cardinal Bertram of Breslau, Cardinal Faulhaber, and the bishops of Bavaria, the bishops of the province of Cologne, and those of the province of Freiburg published pastoral letters condemning National Socialism, with its idolatry of race and of the State.119

But Cardinal Adolf Johannes Bertram (March 14, 1859 – July 6, 1945), presented by the church to the world in “We Remember” as a shining example of opposition to Nazi rule, ordered, as is well-known from current research, a requiem mass for Adolf Hitler to be held in all the parishes of Wroclaw/Breslau shortly before the city’s liberation by the Red Army and shortly before Bertram’s own death.120

The multivariate perspective

Our multivariate analysis of the library holdings of the national libraries of the world on the Shoah revealed very interesting aspects, further corroborating our analysis above. In Table 18, we present some selected statistically significant results of a partial correlation analysis of these library holdings with our list of socioeconomic background variables.121 In order to correct for the statistical skewness of the national library holdings indicator (Table 6), we took the fourth root of the original The mean geographical distance of a country to Belgium, and the real income level in 2010 (natural logarithm of income per capita in the EU=100), were kept constant.

  • The variable trust, highlighted by recent international comparative economic research, has again been confirmed to be of overriding importance.122 Societies based on trust are also less prone to prejudice and tend to be open to Shoah knowledge and awareness, as indicated by national library holdings data.
  • There is a clear-cut positive partial correlation coefficient of the share of “other Christians per total population” and the openness of the national libraries toward holdings of titles on the Shoah.123
  • The share of Jews per total population has a clear-cut positive statistical relationship with Shoah knowledge and awareness of a society, manifesting itself in national library holdings of Shoah-related titles,124 again underlining the beneficial effects of a larger Jewish community on the liberal and open-minded intellectual climate of a country.
  • The country’s share in the world’s top 500 universities has a clear-cut positive relationship with national library holdings on the Shoah.125 There is a clear interaction between library quality and the top international ranking of a country’s universities.
  • FPZ (free production zones) employment as percentage of total population has a significant and negative effect.126 Countries practicing the model of the “new international division of labor” tend to be global peripheries with the corresponding negative effects on knowledge accumulation, described above.
  • The rate of societal anti-Semitism, measured by the ADL 100 indicator (rate of anti-Semitism per total population), clearly negatively affects the national library Shoah items holding indicator.127
Table 18: Partial correlations of the national library holdings on the Shoah with standard socioeconomic and political indicators128

Variables (constant: distance to Belgium, income 2010) (natural logarithm EU=100)

Correlation with the national library holdings indicator

Error probability

Degrees of freedom

Gallup poll about satisfaction: trust in other people

0.378

0.003

59

Share of other Christians per total population

0.353

0.002

70

Share of Jews per total population

0.331

0.005

70

Country share in world’s top 500 universities

0.322

0.006

70

FPZ (free production zones) employment as % of total population

-0.265

0.025

70

ADL 100 (rate of anti-Semitism per total population)

-0.319

0.011

60

Table 19 presents a tentative cross-national analysis of the national library holdings of a country on the Shoah, based on indicators of the structural position of a country in international society. Using a standard approach of international development performance accounting,129 the following predictors proved to be significant in our standard OLS multiple regression analysis:

  • The first is the so-called Kuznets curve130 of the nonlinear trade-off between development levels and development performance, named after Nobel Economics Laureate Simon Kuznets (1901-1985), who discovered that inequality levels are greatest at middle income levels. Many crisis phenomena and patterns of prejudice, apart from inequality, also culminate at middle income levels, and in our case, the lack of a national library to inform the citizens of a nation about the Shoah is also highest at those
  • Public education expenditure is associated with a higher rate of national library holdings on the Shoah. Priorities in educational investment have a positive trade-off with overall cultural and political performance.131
  • Cross-national development research tends to contradict many of the optimistic assumptions of the “welcome culture” in the West. In our case, net international migration rates132 are a significant negative predictor of the national library holdings of a country on the Shoah, thus again confirming apprehensions voiced in the recent literature.133
  • Years of membership in the EU134 have ceteris paribus a significant and positive effect on the overall library culture of a country, and in our case this explanatory variable has a significant positive effect on our dependent variable, i.e., Shoah knowledge and awareness in the national library holdings of a country, which are positively affected by the process of European integration.
  • But years of membership in the European Monetary Union (EMU)135 – due to what Nobel Laureate Martin Feldstein (1939-2019) called the economic liability of European Monetary Union – has ceteris paribus a significant negative effect on many development performance variables, including the adequacy of the national library, and in our case also on the Shoahrelated national library holdings. Maastricht austerity causes a downward pressure on public expenditures, including on education and library infrastructure.
Table 19: Multiple regression – national library holdings about the Shoah and standard political and economic country indicators, including globalization136

Regression coefficient B

Standard error

Standardized regression coefficient

T-value

Error probability

Constant

35.796

22.471

 

1.593

0.116

% world population

0.058

0.057

0.099

1.017

0.313

ln GDP per capita

-9.121

4.889

-3.835

-1.866

0.067

ln GDP per capita ^2

0.569

0.267

4.479

2.129

0.037

MNC PEN – stock of inward FDI per GDP

-0.014

0.012

-0.123

-1.185

0.241

Population density

0.001

0.001

0.188

1.563

0.123

Public education expenditure per GNP

0.246

0.113

0.222

2.179

0.033

Net international migration rate, 2005-2010

-1.309

0.626

-0.310

-2.090

0.041

Years of membership in the EU, 2010

0.046

0.020

0.395

2.240

0.029

Years of membership in EMU, 2010

-0.184

0.104

-0.292

-1.763

0.083

N = 70; adj. R^2 = 44.5%; F = 7.136; error probability = 0.000.

Table 20 finally provides an alternative statistical approach to account for national library holdings about the Shoah. It is clear from Image 6 above that global geography also plays a role in our results.

Apart from national income (see above), geographical distance to Europe (EU-28, with Belgium at its center) will play a role in explaining national library holdings. Our regression analysis used the sophisticated CEPII approach to calculate geographical distance, which is now state-of-the-art in global political geography.137 The CEPII database GeoDist provides several geographical variables, in particular bilateral distances measured using city-level data to account for the geographic distribution of population inside each nation. Different measures of bilateral distances are available for 225 countries. For most of them, different calculations of “intra-national distances’’ are also available.

In all our multiple regression test approaches, the share of “other Christians” from Barro’s international religious denomination data invariably played a major positive role in the explanation of our national library holdings variable.138 The theoretical reason behind these quite robust statistical effects is that the “dissident” Christian groupings, more often than not historically persecuted by the mainstream Christian congregations, especially by the Roman Catholic Church, often showed solidarity with Jews. To this day, Evangelical Christians in America are among the staunchest supporters of Israel.139

Finally, it should be noted that the ADL-rates of anti-Semitism have no significant effects on our library holdings data, once the other important variables are introduced into the equation.140

Table 20: Multiple regression – national library holdings about the Shoah and standard political and economic country indicators, including anti-Semitism

Regression coefficient B

Standard error

Standardized regression coefficient

T-value

Error probability

Constant

3.830

1.655

xxx

2.315

0.024

Distance to Belgium

-0.525

0.150

-0.392

-3.506

0.001

Income 2010 (natural logarithm of EU-28 = 100)

0.491

0.201

0.280

2.444

0.018

Share of other Christians per total population

5.793

1.938

0.336

2.990

0.004

% anti-Semitic (ADL 100)

0.002

0.011

0.022

0.189

0.850

N = 62; Adj. R^2 = 35.8%; F = 9.504; error probability = 0.000.

What is needed: a startup for high quality open-access research depositories in the field of Shoah studies and Jewish studies in general

We turn now to strategic issues of how to possibly redress the many geographical and other imbalances which exist in global Shoah knowledge and awareness. For a sound and well-founded analysis, we need to look at the structures of global modern science, including the social sciences, the humanities, and history, and the way in which they are distributed around the globe today. Shoah knowledge and awareness requires a sound global scientific base, communicated in such a way that the results of science are openly accessible at least in working-paper form to the millions of internet users around the globe.

Undoubtedly, many of the imbalances discussed in this article are connected with general research, science, and publication policy perspectives of social and historical sciences today, for which global Shoah knowledge and awareness policy is yet to find answers. Publishing in high-priced scholarly journals is in a deep crisis.

In view of the unquestionable digital divide still separating the West from the rest of the world, there is an unquestionable need to overcome the narrowness of the hitherto existing systems of the diffusion of scientific knowledge. If the international scientific production and distribution system yields as the final result that a great part of the landmass of our globe has no access to this information, then something is basically wrong with it. This article analyzed the presence of works about the Shoah; but the simple diffusion of leading journals in the social sciences, like the American Economic Review, the American Political Science Review, or the American Sociological Review,141 will also correspond to the geographical patterns represented most visibly in our Image 5 and Image 6.

As we have shown, there are now tens of thousands of people from around the world, even in the countries of the Middle East, who eagerly read open-access information about the Shoah on Wikipedia.

Should the scientific community, engaged in Shoah research, wait for publishing companies like Elsevier, Sage, Springer, Taylor & Francis, and Wiley-Blackwell to diffuse this knowledge around the globe to a small geographical share of global publics, or should such scientific work be made public in high quality and respected open-access publications? Considering the enormous concentration of the world’s scientific publishing by those five major international publishers,142 which now control 50% of all global article publishing indexed in the Web of Knowledge (now called Web of Science),143 we briefly analyze here the number of scholarly articles on the Shoah published by these major companies. Each company nowadays offers a representative, exclusive database about the articles published by it, and we simply directly took the numbers mentioned by them. In each case we performed an exact title search:

  • Elsevier – Science Direct144 – 29 results
  • Sage– Sage Journals145 – 21 results
  • Springer – Springerlink146 – 59 results
  • Taylor & Francis – Taylor & Francis Online147 – 67 results
  • Wiley-Blackwell – Wiley Online Library148 – 15 results

We will not go into the exact details of a comparison of the frequency of Shoahrelated articles published by these big five international publishers compared to the hundreds of articles they publish – however important they may be – which correspond to the latest intellectual fashion trends, achieve very high quotation factors, and range from feminism to multiculturalism, gender studies, queer social science, and so on.

It is no longer a good idea to put the dissemination of the results of Shoah research exclusively in the hands of the international scholarly publishing system as it is evolving today. In our strategic conclusions, we can only reiterate here the critique, voiced for many years, of the duality of university-ranking systems combined with journal impact factor lists, which compel an ever larger percentage of global academic staff to publish in high impact factor journals so as to advance in their careers, from simple tenure decisions for assistant professors to recruitments of people at the professorial level.149 This basically unhealthy and irrational system does its own to marginalize Shoah studies in the future. Why? The distortions caused by this system were already spelled out years ago, and yet they persist and only get stronger and stronger.150 In times of financial constraints, the idea has spread in most political circles in the Western world to link government university funds to what is euphemistically called “performance.”151 The iron logic of this “performance” testing is built on publications in high impact factor journals, reflecting the citations of a journal in the global literature, which then are used to evaluate the ranking of a university. What is the connection, then, with Shoah studies? Younger scientists or even persons striving for tenure, let alone for a job as professor, and working in the field of Shoah studies are confronted by the fact that the impact factor, nowadays measured by a number called the H-Index,152 of even the leading journal in the field, Oxford University Press’s Holocaust and Genocide Studies is only 16, while themes now very popular in Western academia achieve much higher impact factors. One will probably receive more quotations by writing about “gender” and “discrimination” than by writing about the Shoah. Holocaust and Genocide Studies is the only relevant university-ranking academic journal in the field, while nowadays dozens, if not hundreds, of journals accept and disseminate studies on the entire array of research corresponding to those latest academic fashion trends.

For a university president’s office or a dean’s office looking into the global ranking of their university,153 it is clear that the publications of a colleague in the Journal of Homosexuality (H-Index 64) or in Gender and Society (H-Index 89) are much more attractive in terms of boosting the university’s ranking than a publication in Holocaust and Genocide Studies.154 Most university-ranking systems, using machine-readable data about scientific journals, will function that way, thus putting almost irresistible pressure on scholarly staff to put aside their activities in the field of Shoah studies and concentrate their future academic work on what are today called “ranking relevant journal publications.” The nearly endless literature on the technicalities of the university-ranking process155 more often than not will overlook the simple and – in our case – very tragic consequences of these machineries, marginalizing Shoah studies in favor of other, more trendy scientific subjects. One must also be aware that despite the very encompassing database Scopus’s larger journal coverage in all fields,156 still this particular unique database, too, shows similar biases to those found in the Clarivate Web of Knowledge (formerly Web of Science). Both databases still favor natural sciences and engineering as well as biomedical research to the detriment of social sciences and arts and humanities.157 Similarly, English-language journals are favored to the detriment of other languages. These important limits should be taken into account when assessing any scientific activity.158

A compounding problem, which has to be spelled out in our context, is a certain marginalization of the scholarship published in Israeli scientific journals on the “world market” of scholarly products. There are now only 21 scientific journals published in Israel which are still included in the world’s most inclusive journal database, Scopus.159 Not even one of these Israeli journals is dedicated primarily to Shoah-related research. These journals, ranked by their H-Index are:

Table 21: Scientific journals published in Israel and included in the Scopus database

Title

ISSN

H- Index

Publisher

Coverage

Categories

Israel Medical Association Journal

15651088

50

Israel Medical Association

1999-ongoing

Medicine (miscellaneous)

Pediatric Endocrinology Reviews

15654753

32

Y.S. Medical Media Ltd.

2003-ongoing

Medicine (miscellaneous); Pediatrics, Perinatology and Child Health; Endocrinology, Diabetes and Metabolism

Israel Journal of Psychiatry and Related Sciences

3337308

30

Gefen

1981-ongoing

Public Health, Environmental and Occupational Health

Public Health Reviews

21076952, 03010422

26

Technosdar Ltd.

1973-1980, 1982-2003, 2010-ongoing

Community and Home Care; Public Health, Environmental and Occupational Health

Israeli Journal of Aquaculture – Bamidgeh

0792156X

25

Kibbutz Ein Hamifratz

1988-ongoing

Agronomy and Crop Science; Aquatic Science

Medicine and Law

7231393

18

Yozmol Heiliger

1982-ongoing

Law; Health Policy

Harefuah

177768

17

Israel Medical Association

1947-1964, 1969-ongoing

Medicine (miscellaneous)

Israel Exploration Journal

212059

14

Israel Exploration Society

2002-ongoing

History; Archaeology; Archaeology (arts and humanities)

Refuat ha-Peh veha-Shinayim (1993)

7929935

11

Histadrut Rofei ha-Shinayim be-Eretz Yisrael

2001-ongoing

Medicine (miscellaneous)

Geography Research Forum

3335275

10

Ben-Gurion University of the Negev

1990-1993, 1995-ongoing

Earth-Surface Processes; Geography, Planning and Development

Israel Journal of Veterinary Medicine

3349152

9

Israel Veterinary Medical Association

2007-ongoing

Animal Science and Zoology; Veterinary (miscellaneous)

International Water and Irrigation

3345807

7

SNER Communications Ltd.

1994-1999, 2001-ongoing

Aquatic Science; Geotechnical Engineering and Engineering Geology; Water Science and Technology

Atiqot

7928424

5

Israel Antiquities Authority

2011-ongoing

Archaeology; Archaeology (arts and humanities); Conservation

Israel Economic Review

7920385

4

Bank of Israel

2008-ongoing

Economics, Econometrics and Finance (miscellaneous)

Scripta Classica Israelica

3344509

3

Israel Society for the Promotion of Classical Studies

2011, 2014-ongoing

Classics; Literature and Literary Theory; History

53rd Israel Annual Conference on Aerospace Sciences, IACAS 2013

2015

3

xx

2015

Computer Networks and Communications; Electrical and Electronic Engineering; Hardware and Architecture

56th Israel Annual Conference on Aerospace Sciences, IACAS 2016

2016

3

xx

2016

Electrical and Electronic Engineering; Environmental Engineering; Soil Science; Water Science and Technology

57th Israel Annual Conference on Aerospace Sciences, IACAS 2017

2017

2

xx

2017

Electronic, Optical and Magnetic Materials; Mechanics of Materials

CHoPS 2015 – 8th International Conference for Conveying and Handling of Particulate Solids

2015

2

xx

2015

Computer Networks and Communications; Computer Science Applications; Control and Systems Engineering; Modeling and Simulation

Cahiers d’Etudes Levinassiennes

15655512

1

Institut d’Etudes Levinasienne

xx

Philosophy

Iran is now included with no less than 174 journals in the Scopus list, and there are now 820 journals from the entire Middle East region in this list. That means the share of Israel in the number of university-ranking relevant peer-reviewed journals of the entire region of the Middle East is now only 2.6%.160 These depressing data also imply that the vast majority of articles on the Shoah have to be published nowadays by journals outside of Israel, thus implicitly putting the scientific publication of the results of Shoah research in the hands of profit and sales maximizing publishers of scientific journals, who may one day decide that it pays much better to launch additional journals like the already existing Journal of Islamic Marketing (the quotation metric measured by the so-called H-Factor for this journal is 28).

In addition, gradually the West is losing not only economically but also scientifically vis-à-vis the rising power centers around the globe, creating the need to find new anchors for Shoah research relevant to Shoah knowledge and awareness.

Image 11 shows, on the basis of the Scimago-SIR Academic Institution ranking,161 the dramatic shifts which have taken place in recent years to the detriment of the “old” West.

Image 11: Country distribution of the top 100 research institutes and universities (RI) around the world

Country distribution

Without question, Israeli research institutes and universities were and are the main anchor of Shoah knowledge and awareness and of the scientific work to support it. Leading Israeli universities and research institutes, also negatively affected by the anti-Semitic BDS movement, are no longer among the global top 100, and nowadays the Scimago-SIR rankings of the Israeli institutions are:162

189   Tel Aviv University

245   Weizmann Institute of Science

295   Hebrew University of Jerusalem

348   Technion – Israel Institute of Technology

388   IBM Israel Research Laboratory

473   Ben-Gurion University of the Negev

501   Hadassah Medical Center

502   Bar-Ilan University

530   Chaim Sheba Medical Center

557   Tel Aviv Sourasky Medical Center

624   Agricultural Research Organization

632   Rambam Health Care Campus

633   Shaare Zedek Medical Center

644   University of Haifa

653   Rabin Medical Center

680   Edith Wolfson Medical Center

688   Assaf Harofeh Medical Center Zerifin

693   Meir Medical Center

694   Interdisciplinary Center Herzliya

701   Open University of Israel

705   Soroka University Medical Center

709   Schneider Children’s Medical Center of Israel

732   Ariel University

752   Clalit Health Services

765   Holon Institute of Technology

Ideas for a startup: what one could learn from Spanish efforts to maximize the scholarly presence in the age of globalization and the internet

Having analyzed the data and published this article in the state of Israel, not only the nation which solemnly celebrates Yom HaShoah (יום השואה) each year but which is also a nation of startups and innovation,163 we would like to highlight as an outsider some of the factors which could redress the negative trends analyzed in this article through proper initiatives. These would involve synergies of existing and of increasing high-quality open-access scholarly publishing in the field, to be implemented by Israeli scholarship and ingenuity.

Spain, with its vibrant bibliometric analysis, is perhaps the Western country which so far has come up with the most innovative answers to the strategic problems of the unequal diffusion of the results of scientific research in our age. In being, with regard to its language and culture, part of Europe and the Americas in a way, Spain not only developed its own ranking systems of world universities and academic research and devised an innovative new system to rank scholarly journals, but it also developed an encompassing and mostly open-access network of scientific literature published in more than 10,000 journals, now with more than two million users worldwide, mostly in the countries of the Iberian linguistic and cultural tradition. This network, Dialnet, was developed with ingenuity by the University of La Rioja.164 This network could serve as a role model for a global network of Jewish studies and/or Shoah studies, with a high percentage of open-access high-quality peer-reviewed articles to be disseminated to the global libraries analyzed in this article.

Dialnet began its activities in 2001 specializing in the humanities and the social sciences. The portal is managed by the Dialnet Foundation of the University of La Rioja, a nonprofit organization established in February 2009 for the management and development of one of the largest databases of scientific literature in the world.

It contains the indexes of the scientific journals of Spain, Portugal, and Latin America, including books (monographs), doctoral theses, conferences, and other documents. The full text of many of the documents is available online. Nowadays many Spanish and Latin American universities and public and specialized libraries collaborate in the initiative. It also incorporates databases with documents in other languages. Apart from its other advantages, it offers full-text doctoral theses.

Further ideas for a startup in the field

Without question, other measures could also accompany such a strategy, such as the prepublication electronic publishing of articles in the field in high-quality open-access academic depositories such as the Social Science Research Network (SSRN) in New York.165 It currently disseminates 881,976 reviewed research papers from 418,492 researchers across 30 disciplines. Nowadays many scholarly institutions and scientific journals have their content automatically disseminated by the SSRN. The partners in publishing of the SSRN are a de facto “Who’s Who” of the 57 American institutions that are among the world’s top 100 academic institutes.166 The working papers of many leading research institutions are published in conjunction with the SSRN.

Another depository of a very similar design is IDEAS/RePEc.167 Run by the University of Connecticut, it is chiefly designed to be the working-paper depository of the economics profession. It indexes over 2,900,000 research items, including over 2,700,000 items that can be freely downloaded in full text. There are over 2,000 participating archives, including all the major publishers and research outlets in the economics field. Authors register with RePEc to create an online profile. Interested publics from around the world can download their papers.

Working papers of partner institutions are directly uploaded, while individuals wishing to deposit their prepublication literature must do so via the Munich-based Munich Personal RePEc Archive (MPRA),168 which first reviews all submitted papers to ensure a certain amount of quality control. In all, there are now 14,392 participating economics institutions, and 56,586 authors who have registered with the RePEc Author Service. They have authored 1,538,047 items listed in RePEc.169

The following is a quick glance at the dynamics of the global research depositories and databases whose best characteristics could be combined in such an open-access Shoahrelated and/or Jewish-studies-related research depository:

  • Researchgate:170 15 million users, 100 million papers, unfortunately no prior review, Alexa global internet traffic rank: 124; social network communication functions in place; ranking of scholars and papers is offered. Average monthly downloads of the Wikipedia article about it: 14,039.
  • Edu:171 34 million users, 21 million papers, unfortunately no prior review, Alexa global internet traffic rank: 267; social network communication functions are offered; ranking of scholars and papers exists. Average monthly downloads of the Wikipedia article about it: 9,543.
  • Social Science Research Network (SSRN):172 882,206 research papers from 418,632 researchers; there is prior review and quality control; there is an individual paper upload via SSRN, but for member institutions there is an automatic upload of their working papers; Alexa global internet traffic rank: 8,250; no social network communication functions are offered; but there is a ranking of scholars and papers. Average monthly downloads of the Wikipedia article about it: 8,013.
  • Dialnet: 173 Indexing and search profiles for the articles from 10,511 journals, mainly from the Iberian Peninsula and Latin America, containing more than 6.6 million documents, over 2 million users; many texts freely available as open-access materials; the depository also contains the freely available full text of more than 200,000 theses (master level + PhD). Alexa global internet traffic rank is 10,627. Average monthly downloads of the English-language Wikipedia article about the merged article about Dialnet and the University of La Rioja: 345. Average monthly downloads of the Spanish Wikipedia article about it: 2,211.
  • IDEAS/RePEc:1749 million research papers in the field of economics, 2.7 million papers can be downloaded freely. Over 50,000 authors, prior review of the individual paper upload via Munich University (FRG) MPRA Archive; for member institutions there is an automatic upload of reviewed working papers; Alexa global internet rank: 13,880; no social network communication functions are offered; but a very sophisticated ranking of scholars and papers is implemented. Average monthly downloads of the Wikipedia article about it: 1,876.
  • Central and East European Library (CEEOL):175 Indexing and search profiles for the publications of more than 1,000 publishers and their journals from Eastern Europe in the fields of the humanities and the social sciences; many texts are freely available as open-access materials; Alexa global internet traffic rank is 113,068. Average monthly downloads of the Wikipedia article about it: 176.

Table 22 and Image 12 summarize the characteristics of the mentioned depositories.

Table 22: Webometrics of important research depositories which could serve as role models for a future research depository of Shoah studies and Jewish studies

Alexa rank

Wikipedia monthly downloads

Researchgate

124

14,039

Academia.edu

267

9,543

SSRN

8,250

8,013

Dialnet

10,627

2,211

RePEc/Ideas

13,880

1,876

CEEOL

113,068

176

Image 12: The global popularity of scientific depositories as measured by Alexa internet traffic statistics and monthly Wikipedia downloads, from August 2018 to August 2019

popularity of scientific depositories as measured by Alexa

Conclusions

We have reached the end of a long journey into the field of bibliometrics concerning the impact of the literature commemorating the six million Jews who were murdered in the Shoah. Our article summarizes the enormous differences in the numbers of titles on the Shoah in the library catalogues of the world. The global North-South and North-East divide in the library presence of Shoah-related titles evident from our statistics is simply overwhelming.

We encountered many aspects which were perhaps to be expected, but we also encountered many surprising aspects of the political geography of global library holdings on the Shoah. For example, with 235 items, Turkey is the majority-Muslim country with the largest library holdings on the subject, much higher in the rankings than many European Union member countries.

One of the most breathtaking aspects of our research results is the fact that users of the King Fahad National Library in Saudi Arabia, thanks to our electronic age, now have almost 110 times more titles available on the Shoah than the pontiff, the cardinals, the bishops, and the more than 2,800 bureaucrats working for the global administration of the Roman Catholic Church in the Vatican via their central library, the Vatican Library, while the relatively still poor Caribbean country of Jamaica, with its world-class universities, offers in its national library 13 times as many titles on the Shoah as the Vatican Library! The National Library of Egypt, the Biblioteca Alexandrina, now already has eight times as many titles on the Shoah at the disposal of its readers than the Vatican.

Table 7 above summarizes the availability of Shoah-related titles in the libraries of the legislative assemblies around the world. In our list, three parliamentary libraries excel: that of the European Parliament, the Canadian Parliamentary Library, and – of course – the Library of Congress in Washington, DC. The results for the legislative assembly libraries in Spain, Brazil, Switzerland, Finland, and Australia are depressing, and at least suggest the hypothesis that in the political system of these countries, solidly integrated economically and politically with the rest of West, the issues of the Shoah play only a secondary parliamentary role or practically no parliamentary role at all.

There are also huge differences in the number of Shoah-related titles in the libraries of international organizations. The United Nations Economic Commission for Latin America in Santiago, well-known for its dedicated analytical work on Latin American and global social and economic problems, excels all the UN-related and other libraries under consideration. At the same time, the hierarchy of the library holdings about the Shoah among the different UN organizations is revealing and even astonishing, and tells us indeed something about the presence of a strong anti-Israeli lobby in several UN organizations and bodies, including UNESCO and the UN ESCWA in Beirut.

We also analyzed the presence of Shoah-related classics in the libraries of the world, based on the data of the OCLC Worldcat.

Our analyses based on Wikipedia statistics suggest a more positive tendency. Apart from the more than 9,000 global daily downloads of the English-language Wikipedia article on the Shoah, there are now more than 1,000 daily downloads in Spanish, Portuguese, German, Japanese, French, Russian, and Italian. And at least the Spanish, Portuguese, and French languages, just as English, are being spoken widely in the developing world. Also, the more than 100 daily downloads in Chinese, Persian, Arabic, Indonesian, Korean, and Vietnamese have a high relevance for strategies to think about the diffusion of Shoah knowledge and awareness in the developing countries.

Our assessment of the holdings of Arab libraries on the subject of the Shoah revealed that the flagship Oxford University Press journal Holocaust and Genocide Studies was available only at the American University Library in Cairo, Egypt; the Christian Notre Dame University in Louaizé, Lebanon; the American University of Iraq in Sulaimani, Iraq; the American University of Kuwait in Kuwait City; the Weill Cornell Medical College in Doha, Qatar; and at the United Arab Emirates University in Al Ain, UAE.

According to our hypothesis, one of the main reasons for the trajectory of still existing radicalism, hatred, and intolerance to be found in many parts of the Arab world is indeed the dire state of higher education, especially in the social sciences, in the region, which is also evident from our statistics. A typical consequence of such higher-education structures is the prolific presence of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion in Arab libraries, which blames Jews and Freemasons for the French Revolution, the Russian Revolution, and World War I and II. These infamous “Protocols” are available in at least 10 Arabic translations, published in 203 editions. Its readership includes the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia  Air Force Research Center, the King Fahad Security College, the National Library of Kuwait, and the Qatar National Library.

But our analysis, based on the main library catalogue of the Vatican, revealed that the main Vatican Library also still contained in August 2019, 80 years from the outbreak of World War II, three titles by the chief ideologist of the NSDAP, Alfred Rosenberg, among them his infamous edition of the Protocols, along with four other editions of the Protocols in English, five in German, and so on.

Our multivariate analysis of the library holdings of the national libraries of the world on the Shoah revealed very interesting aspects, further corroborating our analysis above. There is a clear-cut positive partial correlation coefficient of the share of “other Christians per total population” and the openness of the national libraries toward holdings of titles on the Shoah. The share of Jews per total population has a clear-cut positive statistical relationship with Shoah knowledge and awareness of a society, manifesting itself in national library holdings of Shoah-related titles, again underlining the beneficial effects of a larger Jewish community on the liberal and open-minded intellectual climate of a country.

We highlight in the article phenomena of the global digital and science divide. Undoubtedly, many of the imbalances discussed in this article are connected with general research, science, and publication policy perspectives of social and historical sciences today, for which global Shoah knowledge and awareness policy has yet to find answers. At present the way in which science is communicated in high-priced scholarly journals, published by a handful of leading global publishers, is in a state of deep crisis.

In view of the unquestionable digital divide still separating the West from the rest of the world, there is an unquestionable need to overcome the narrowness of the hitherto existing systems of the diffusion of scientific knowledge. If the international scientific production and distribution system yields as a final result that a great part of the landmass of our globe has no access to this information, then something is basically wrong with it. This article analyzed the presence of works about the Shoah; but the diffusion of leading journals in the social sciences, like the American Economic Review, the American Political Science Review, or the American Sociological Review, corresponds to the geographical patterns represented most visibly in Image 5 and Image 6 above.

As we have shown, there are now tens of thousands of people from around the world, even in the countries of the Middle East, who eagerly read open-access information about the Shoah.

Should the scientific community engaged in Shoah research wait for publishing companies like Elsevier, Sage, Springer, Taylor & Francis, and Wiley-Blackwell to diffuse this knowledge around the globe to a small geographical share of global publics, or should such scientific work be made public in high quality and respected open-access publications?

We suggest the launching of such an open-access working paper depository of Shoahrelated studies and/or Jewish studies modeled around the leading global depositories such as Researchgate, Academia.Edu, the Social Science Research Network, and IDEAS/RePEc. Such a depository could also have features of the Spanish-language database Dialnet and the Central and East European Library (CEEOL). The article discusses their advantages and disadvantages.

Appendix

Appendix Table 1: Master list of the 165 library catalogues used in this project

Library catalogue

Website

Search profile

Type of catalogue

Albania

http://www.al.cobiss.net/scripts/cobiss?ukaz=SFRM&id=1954593281638220

title word

national union catalogue

Algeria

https://www.ccdz.cerist.dz/index.php?nav=11

title word

national union catalogue

Australia

https://trove.nla.gov.au/?q&adv=y

title word

national union catalogue

Austria

https://www.unicat.be/uniCat?func=advancedSearch&uiLanguage=en

title word

national union catalogue

Belgium

https://www.unicat.be/uniCat?func=advancedSearch&uiLanguage=en

title word

national union catalogue

Bosnia and Herzegovina

http://www.bh.cobiss.net/scripts/cobiss?ukaz=SFRM&id=1957346430628425

title word

national union catalogue

Brazil

https://www.pergamum.pucpr.br/redepergamum/consultas/site_CRP/pesquisa.php

title word

national union catalogue

Bulgaria

https://plus.bg.cobiss.net/opac7/bib/search/advanced?db=cobib

title word

national union catalogue

Canada

https://canada.on.worldcat.org/advancedsearch?databaseList=

title word

national union catalogue

Central America176 (Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, and Panama)

https://www.metabase.net/

keyword

national union catalogue

China

http://opac.calis.edu.cn/simpleSearch.do

keyword

national union catalogue

Costa Rica

http://catalogo.sinabi.go.cr/janium-bin/busqueda_rapida.pl?Id=20190721215044

title word

national union catalogue

Croatia

http://opak.crolib.hr/cgi-bin/ewero.cgi

keyword

national union catalogue

Czech Republic

https://aleph.nkp.cz/F/?func=file&file_name=find-b&local_base=skc&CON_LNG=ENG

title word

national union catalogue

Denmark

https://bibliotek.dk/eng

title word

national union catalogue

Egypt

http://www.egyptlib.net.eg/Site/OPAC/AdvancedSearch.aspx

title word

national union catalogue

Estonia

https://www.ester.ee/search~S1

title word

national union catalogue

European Commission Libraries

https://ec-europa-finder.hosted.exlibrisgroup.com/primo-explore/search?vid=32EUC_VU1&lang=en_US&sortby=rank&mode=advanced

title word

national union catalogue

Finland

https://melinda.kansalliskirjasto.fi/F/1HSYJ2T9YT5GPNC4LQUCKRDL3GYXQBCIR8BD2D3G478JUYGH2K-00361?func=find-d-0

title word

national union catalogue

France

http://www.sudoc.abes.fr/xslt/?COOKIE=U10178,Klecteurweb,I250,B341720009+,SY,NLECTEUR+WEBOPC,D2.1,E723e19ab-ad9,A,H,R85.124.10.31,FY

title word

national union catalogue

Germany (Baden Württemberg)

http://swb.bsz-bw.de/?COOKIE=Us998,Pbszgast,I2017,B20728+,SY,NRecherche-DB,D2.1,E7560b59e-0,A,H,R193.197.31.8,FY

title word

national union catalogue

Germany (Bavaria)

https://opacplus.bib-bvb.de/TouchPoint_touchpoint/search.do?methodToCall=switchSearchPage&SearchType=2&emptyFields=true

title word

national union catalogue

Germany (Berlin State)

https://portal.kobv.de/advancedSearch.do?index=internal&plv=2

title word

national union catalogue

Germany (Hesse)

http://cbsopac.rz.uni-frankfurt.de/LNG=DU&CHARSET=UTF-8/DB=2.1/?COOKIE=U203,K203,I251,B1999++++++,SN,NDefault+login,D2.1,E46d688e2-545,A,H,R213.225.34.80,FY

title word

national union catalogue

Germany (Lower Saxony, Saxony-Anhalt, Thuringia, Hamburg, Bremen, Schleswig-Holstein, and Mecklenburg-Vorpommern)

https://kxp.k10plus.de/DB=2.1/LNG=DU/?COOKIE=U999,K999,D2.1,Ef1da30bc-e,I0,B9994++++++,SY,A,H12,,73,,76-78,,88-90,NGAST,R213.225.34.80,FN

title word

national union catalogue

Germany (North Rhine-Westphalia)

http://193.30.112.134/F/CC5KC8SUP1VNUR4M3XJLF5G3MM3NBH9SG9YQ4DSQIANLUVB4LQ-00056?func=file&file_name=find-c

title word

national union catalogue

Hungary

http://www.mokka.hu/en/web/guest/home

title word

national union catalogue

Iceland

https://leitir.is/primo-explore/search?sortby=rank&vid=GEGNIR&lang=en_US

title word

national union catalogue

India

https://indcat.inflibnet.ac.in/index.php/search

title word

national union catalogue

Israel

http://merhav.nli.org.il/primo-explore/search?sortby=rank&vid=ULI&lang=en_US&fromRedirectFilter=true&_ga=2.118302861.528956307.1564511401-62759818.1557720315

title word

national union catalogue

Italy

https://opac.sbn.it/sbn3.0/opac/iccu/free.jsp

title word

national union catalogue

Japan

https://ci.nii.ac.jp/books/?l=en

title word

national union catalogue

Jordan

http://hip.jopuls.org.jo/c/portal/layout?p_l_id=PUB.1.1

title word

national union catalogue

Korea (South)

http://www.riss.kr/index.do

title word

national union catalogue

Latvia

https://kopkatalogs.lv/F/D1EURLMQYAK396QQKJJQFMDI9LMKIM24VGH4G2TDSL3E3S79B9-06034?func=find-d-0

title word

national union catalogue

Lithuania

http://www.libis.lt/lang.do?language=en

title word

national union catalogue

Luxembourg

https://a-z.lu/primo-explore/search?vid=BIBNET&tab=all_content&sortby=rank&lang=fr_FR

title word

national union catalogue

Malta

https://www.maltalibraries.gov.mt/iguana/www.main.cls?v=c97386a2-914a-40c2-bd8d-df4c273175e6&searchProfile=PL

title word

national union catalogue

Montenegro

https://plus.cg.cobiss.net/opac7/bib/search/advanced?db=cobib

title word

national union catalogue

New Zealand

https://tepuna.on.worldcat.org/advancedsearch?databaseList=

title word

national union catalogue

Northern Macedonia

https://plus.mk.cobiss.net/opac7/bib/search/advanced?db=cobib

title word

national union catalogue

Philippines

http://opac.librarylink.org.ph/cgi-bin/koha/opac-search.pl

title word

national union catalogue

Poland

http://katalog.nukat.edu.pl

title word

national union catalogue

Portugal

http://porbase.bnportugal.pt/ipac20/ipac.jsp?session=156X546T49T43.387531&profile=porbase&menu=search&submenu=subtab15&ts=1564546664942

title word

national union catalogue

Saudi Arabia plus 24 Arab countries –Aruc Arab Union Catalogue

https://www.aruc.org/en/home

title word

national union catalogue

Serbia

http://www.vbs.rs/scripts/cobiss?ukaz=SFRM&id=2006505524603013

title word

national union catalogue

Slovenia

https://plus.si.cobiss.net/opac7/bib/search/advanced?db=cobib

title word

national union catalogue

Sweden

http://libris.kb.se/form_extended.jsp?f=ext

title word

national union catalogue

Switzerland

https://www.swissbib.ch/Search/Advanced

title word

national union catalogue

Thailand

http://uc.thailis.or.th/catalog/Advance.aspx

title word

national union catalogue

Tunisia

http://www.bu.turen.tn/accueil.php

keyword

national union catalogue

Turkey

http://www.toplukatalog.gov.tr/

title word, to be searched with “baslik”

national union catalogue

United Kingdom

https://discover.libraryhub.jisc.ac.uk/advanced-search/

title word

national union catalogue

Vatican

https://opac.vatlib.it/all/

title word

national union catalogue

Albania

http://www.bksh.al/Katalogu/library/wwwopac/wwwroot/beginner/index_gb.html

title word

national library

Argentina

https://catalogo.bn.gov.ar/F/7PUIK1SCSFTP2AUGYGXHTMX2LT3TJIR2IYCA81SXH4B1ATI81B-93924?func=find-b-0#

title word

national library

Australia

https://catalogue.nla.gov.au/Search/Advanced

title word

national library

Austria

https://search.onb.ac.at/primo-explore/search?institution=43ACC_ONB&vid=ONB&tab=default_tab&search_scope=ONB_gesamtbestand&mode=advanced&displayMode=full&bulkSize=10&highlight=true&dum=true&query=any,contains,shoah&displayField=all&lang=de_DE

title word

national library

Azerbaijan

http://ek.anl.az/search/advanced?theme=e-kataloq

title word

national library

Bahamas

http://bahamas-voyager-linux.hosted.exlibrisgroup.com/vwebv/searchAdvanced

title word

national library

Belarus

https://e-catalog.nlb.by/

title word

national library

Belgium

https://opac.kbr.be/Library/form.aspx?SC=DEFA

title word

national library

Bhutan

https://aleph-01.kb.dk/F/FS4YFD6DYSVU758QC1VX1F24YNG3MXL4CNMBL58NL7VDTXJE1K-01406?func=file&file_name=find-d

title word

national library

Bosnia and Herzegovina

http://www.nub.ba/xnj/index.php/usluge/za-korisnike/online-katalog

title word

national library

Brazil

http://acervo.bn.br/sophia_web/index.html

title word

national library

Canada

https://bac-lac.on.worldcat.org/advancedsearch?databaseList=

title word

national library

Chile

http://descubre.bibliotecanacional.gob.cl/primo_library/libweb/action/search.do;jsessionid=CF683B6C0CC95839C56CBE49E0D0EC4F?mode=Advanced&ct=AdvancedSearch&vid=BNC&dscnt=0&dstmp=1563767016376

title word

national library

China

http://www.nlc.cn/newen/

keyword

national library

Colombia

http://catalogo.bibliotecanacional.gov.co/uhtbin/cgisirsi.exe/?ps=Fzm3rDAI6K/B.NACIONAL/234820014/60/502/X

title word

national library

Costa Rica

http://catalogo.sinabi.go.cr/janium-bin/busqueda_rapida.pl?Id=20190721215044

title word

national library

Croatia

http://katalog.nsk.hr/F?RN=840799691

title word

national library

Cuba

http://bdigital.bnjm.cu/?secc=catalogo

title word

national library

Cyprus

http://opac.cypruslibrary.gov.cy/cgi-bin/koha/opac-search.pl

title word

national library

Czech Republic

https://aleph.nkp.cz/F/?func=file&file_name=find-b&CON_LNG=ENG&local_base=nkc

title word

national library

Denmark

https://rex.kb.dk/primo-explore/search?sortby=rank&vid=NUI&lang=en_US

title word

national library

Ecuador

http://biblioteca.casadelacultura.gob.ec/cgi-bin/koha/opac-search.pl

title word

national library

Egypt

http://balis.bibalex.org/en/OPAC/Home/LoadAdvancedSearchOPAC

title word

national library

Finland

https://kansalliskirjasto.finna.fi/Search/Advanced

title word

national library

France

https://catalogue.bnf.fr/recherche-avancee.do?pageRech=rav

title word

national library

Germany

https://portal.dnb.de/opac.htm;jsessionid=XYUnK4B2geNFDtw9LjkEsww6_9_dRKiQ2O_5Kx2S.prod-fly9?method=showOptions#top

title word

national library

Greece

https://catalogue.nlg.gr/ipac20/ipac.jsp?profile=ebe0–2&reloadxsl=true#focus

title word

national library

Hungary

http://nektar2.oszk.hu/librivision_eng.html

title word

national library

Iceland

https://leitir.is/primo-explore/search?sortby=rank&vid=GEGNIR&lang=en_US

title word

national library

India

http://opac.nationallibrary.gov.in/cgi-bin/gw/chameleon

title word

national library

Indonesia

http://opac.perpusnas.go.id/

title word

national library

Iran

http://opac.nlai.ir/opac-prod/search/bibliographicAdvancedSearch.do;jsessionid=ECBEACAF7A77A8B0C19FF4EC236212F8?command=NEW_SEARCH&classType=0&pageStatus=1

title word

national library

Iraq

http://www.iraqnla-iq.com/opac/index.php

keyword

national library

Irish Republic

http://catalogue.nli.ie/

title word

national library

Israel

https://merhav.nli.org.il/primo-explore/search?tab=default_tab&search_scope=Local&vid=NLI&lang=en_US&query=any,contains,Shoah

title word

national library

Italy

https://opac.bncf.firenze.sbn.it/opac/controller.jsp?action=search_avanzataedit

title word

national library

Jamaica

https://nlj.worldcat.org/advancedsearch

title word

national library

Japan

https://www.ndl.go.jp/en/

title word

national library

Kazakhstan

http://cat.nlrk.kz/

title word

national library

Korea (South)

http://www.nl.go.kr/english/search/collections.jsp

title word

national library

Kuwait

http://library.nlk.gov.kw/ipac20/ipac.jsp?profile=central

title word

national library

Latvia

https://primolatvija.hosted.exlibrisgroup.com/primo-explore/search?vid=371KISCNLL_VU1&lang=en_US&sortby=rank&mode=advanced

title word

national library

Liechtenstein

http://aleph.bibliothek.li/F?RN=165870401

title word

national library

Lithuania

http://www.libis.lt/lang.do?language=en

title word

national library

Luxembourg

https://a-z.lu/primo-explore/search?vid=BIBNET&tab=all_content&sortby=rank&lang=fr_FR

title word

national library

Malaysia

http://opac.pnm.gov.my/search/advanced?theme=PNM2

title word

national library

Maldives

https://opac.nlm.gov.mv/liberty/opac/search.do?anonymous=true&corporation=default_corp

title word

national library

Malta

https://www.maltalibraries.gov.mt/iguana/www.main.cls?v=c97386a2-914a-40c2-bd8d-df4c273175e6&searchProfile=NL

title word

national library

Mexico

http://bnm.unam.mx/

title word

national library

Moldova

http://catalog.bnrm.md/opac

keyword

national library

Monaco

https://www.mediatheque.mc/Default/form.aspx?SC=DEFAULT

title word

national library

Namibia

http://www.nln.gov.na:8081/client/natlib1/search/advanced;jsessionid=2AF3C9119C32F60112ED140CEB747E9C?

title word

national library

Netherlands

http://opc4.kb.nl/IMPLAND=Y/SRT=YOP/LNG=EN/DB=1/

title word

national library

New Zealand

https://natlib-primo.hosted.exlibrisgroup.com/primo-explore/search?vid=NLNZ&sortby=rank&mode=advanced

title word

national library

Norway

National Library of Norway

title word

national library

Oman

http://libweb.squ.edu.om/uhtbin/cgisirsi.exe/?ps=2TEzp8Rne4/MAIN/43560027/60/502/X

title word

national library

Panama

http://biblos.binal.ac.pa/cgi-bin/abnetclwoe/O7014/ID3cc7a9f6?ACC=101

title word

national library

Peru

http://catalogocolectivo.bnp.gob.pe/Externo/Inicio

keyword

national library

Poland

https://katalogi.bn.org.pl/discovery/search?query=any,contains,shoah&tab=BN&search_scope=MyInstitution1&vid=48OMNIS_NLOP:48OMNIS_NLOP&lang=pl&offset=0&mode=advanced

title word

national library

Portugal

http://catalogo.bnportugal.gov.pt/ipac20/ipac.jsp?profile=

keyword

national library

Romania

http://alephnew.bibnat.ro:8991/F/

title word

national library

Russia

http://aleph.rsl.ru/F/P9Q8JXLGC9G1EC7BKD1GASGQYP8Q8K44STPPS21CRFJNHFEFRI-00541?func=file&file_name=find-b&CON_LNG=ENG

title word

national library

Saudi Arabia

https://eds.b.ebscohost.com/eds/search/basic?vid=0&sid=f71ba5be-044f-42c1-bbe1-7f28e64fea1d%40sessionmgr101

title word

national library

Serbia

http://www.vbs.rs/scripts/cobiss?command=CONNECT&base=70000&lani=sr&scri=cyr

title word

national library

Singapore

https://catalogue.nlb.gov.sg/cgi-bin/spydus.exe/ENQ/WPAC/BIBENQ

title word

national library

Slovak Republic

https://chamo.kis3g.sk/search/advanced?theme=snk

title word

national library

Slovenia

https://plus.cobiss.si/opac7/bib/search?db=nuk

keyword

national library

Spain

http://catalogo.bne.es/uhtbin/webcat

title word

national library

Sweden

https://ask.kb.se/F/VTA657BM8FENYBEX3JD61QDQCXVUUDSSVXBGJ7FG91S14XP86S-06493?func=file&file_name=find-a

title word

national library

Switzerland

https://nb-helveticat.primo.exlibrisgroup.com/discovery/search?vid=41SNL_51_INST:helveticat&sortby=rank&lang=de&mode=advanced

title word

national library

Taiwan – China

http://aleweb.ncl.edu.tw/F/LFJC3H9BNB46K4DNXC3CPBXT5U2XEE3K2AJJ5BVGEUISI3VMPU-30157?func=file&file_name=find-b&CON_LNG=ENG

title word

national library

Thailand

http://www.library.nlt.go.th:8991/F/7U2S9QUFR3EQCDY56QMVYEK4AQ6GIFPEJ1ELJ6FGDBBAC292M4-05631?func=find-d-0

title word

national library

Trinidad and Tobago

http://opac.nalis.gov.tt/uhtbin/cgisirsi.exe/?ps=JCuxBCEcAU/POSAL/X/60/1180/X

title word

national library

Turkey

https://kasif.mkutup.gov.tr/

title word

national library

Ukraine

http://irbis-nbuv.gov.ua/cgi-bin/irbis_all/cgiirbis_64.exe

keyword

national library

United Kingdom

http://explore.bl.uk/primo_library/libweb/action/search.do;jsessionid=F4E94E7CC3F15C671C18273C6308CC22?mode=Advanced&ct=AdvancedSearch&vid=BLVU1&dscnt=0&dstmp=1564483542975

title word

national library

United States

https://catalog.loc.gov/vwebv/searchAdvanced

title word

national library

Uruguay

http://catalogo.bn.gub.uy:8080/F?func=find-b-0&local_base=BNU01

title word

national library

Vatican

https://opac.vatlib.it/all/

title word

national library

Venezuela

http://sisbiv.bnv.gob.ve/cgi-bin/koha/opac-search.pl?idx=ti&q=shoah&branch_group_limit=

title word

national library

Australia

https://parlinfo.aph.gov.au/parlInfo/search/search.w3p;adv=yes;orderBy=date-eFirst;query=Dataset%3Alcatalog;resCount=Default

title word

parliamentary library

Austria

http://bibliothek.parlament.gv.at/primo_library/libweb/action/search.do;jsessionid=67BE76AEB4587B463D4AF7E0E9C17C3C?mode=Advanced&ct=AdvancedSearch&vid=PAR&dscnt=0&dstmp=1563788767835

title word

parliamentary library

Brazil

http://biblioteca2.senado.gov.br:8991/F/?func=find-b-0&local_base=sen01

title word

parliamentary library

Canada

https://parl-gc.primo.exlibrisgroup.com/discovery/search?vid=01CALP_INST:01CALP&lang=en&mode=advanced

title word

parliamentary library

Chile

https://www.bcn.cl/catalogo

title word

parliamentary library

European Union

https://europarl-eplibrary.hosted.exlibrisgroup.com/primo-explore/search?vid=32EPA_V1&lang=en_US&mode=advanced

title word

parliamentary library

Finland

https://eduskunnankirjasto.finna.fi/Search/Advanced

title word

parliamentary library

Georgia

https://catalog.nplg.gov.ge/search*eng

title word

parliamentary library

Germany

https://opac.bundestag.de/aDISWeb/app;jsessionid=925A2B0B8C43F1C58E94A3371A0F66E4?service=direct/1/POOLBUNEWWW21@@@_44029200_35D4CF80/SAA0_ddGFBO_2.directlink&sp=S%24%24GFBO_2&sp=SS6&requestCount=0

title word

parliamentary library

Italy

http://opac.parlamento.it/F/6YL938SKYHHR8SD2P7NQ4D7VF1IU43RSMAI92LCDHBJPC7K97H-34375?func=file&file_name=find-m

title word

parliamentary library

Japan

https://ndlonline.ndl.go.jp/#!/search?searchCode=SIMPLE&lang=en&keyword=shoah

title word

parliamentary library

Mexico

http://biblioteca.diputados.gob.mx/janium-bin/busqueda_rapida.pl?Id=20190721234726

title word

parliamentary library

Spain

http://www.madrid.org/biblio_publicas/cgi-bin/abnetopac/O9846/ID66392401/NT1?ACC=120&FORM=2&xindbt=%271%27

title word

parliamentary library

Sweden

https://riksdagen.primo.exlibrisgroup.com/discovery/search?sortby=rank&vid=46RIKS_INST:VU1&lang=en&mode=advanced

title word

parliamentary library

Switzerland

https://biblio.parlament.ch/libero/WebOpac.cls?VERSION=2&ACTION=LANGXX&RSN=0&DATA=PDB&TOKEN=o1t3MEKdch4010&Z=1

title word

parliamentary library

United States

https://catalog.loc.gov/vwebv/searchAdvanced

title word

parliamentary library

African Union

http://library.africa-union.org/

keyword

international organization library

Asian Development Bank

https://library.adb.org/iii/encore/home?lang=eng&suite=def&advancedSearch=true&searchString=

title word

international organization library

Council of Europe

http://normalsup.coe.int/uhtbin/cgisirsi.exe/?ps=tb3ysTuYcB/ARCHIVES/X/60/79/X

title word

international organization library

European Union

https://ec-europa-finder.hosted.exlibrisgroup.com/primo-explore/search?vid=32EUC_VU1&search_scope=default_scope&query=any,contains,shoah&lang=en_US&mode=advanced

title word

international organization library

International Labour Organization

https://ilo.primo.exlibrisgroup.com/discovery/search?vid=41ILO_INST:41ILO_V1&sortby=rank&lang=en&mode=advanced

title word

international organization library

NATO

https://n10314uk.eos-intl.eu/N10314UK/OPAC/Search/AdvancedSearch.aspx

keyword

international organization library

OSCE Academy (Bishkek)

http://www.osce-academy.net/en/librarycatalog/

title word

international organization library

UN ECA Addis Ababa

http://encore.uneca.org/iii/encore/home?lang=eng&suite=gold&advancedSearch=true&searchString=

title word

international organization library

UN ECLAC Santiago

https://pmt-eu.hosted.exlibrisgroup.com/primo-explore/search?institution=41UNOG&vid=41UNSO_V2&tab=tab%3Ddefault_tab&search_scope=41unog_alma_eclac&mode=advanced&displayMode=full&bulkSize=10&highlight=true&dum=true&query=any,contains,shoah&displayField=all&pcAvailabiltyMode=true&lang=es_ES

title word

international organization library

UN ESCWA Beirut

https://olib.escwa.org.lb/webview?infile=advsearchform.glu&style=adv

title word

international organization library

UNESCO Digital Library

Classify.oclc.org

title word

international organization library

United Nations Geneva

http://pmt-eu.hosted.exlibrisgroup.com/primo_library/libweb/action/search.do?mode=Advanced&ct=AdvancedSearch&vid=41UNOG_V1&dscnt=0&dstmp=1564560649867

title word

international organization library

United Nations New York

http://pmt-eu.hosted.exlibrisgroup.com/primo_library/libweb/action/search.do?mode=Advanced&ct=AdvancedSearch&frbg=&&fn=search&indx=1&dscnt=0&vid=41DHL_V1&ct=search&srt=rank&tab=default_tab&vl(freeText0)=shoah&dum=true&dstmp=1564560260712

title word

international organization library

World Bank and IMF

https://imf-primo.hosted.exlibrisgroup.com/primo-explore/search?vid=01TIMF_INST_V1&lang=en_US&mode=advanced

title word

international organization library

Appendix Table 2: Library catalogues of the Pontifical Universities in the city of Rome, by international comparison

Library catalogue

Website

Search profile

Biblioteca “Paolo VI” – Pontificia Facoltà di Scienze dell’Educazione “Auxilium”

http://oseegenius1.urbe.it/aux/advanced?a=reset

title word

Papal University John Paul II, Krakow, Poland

http://biblioteka.upjp2.edu.pl/

keyword

Pontifical Catholic University of Chile, Santiago

https://buscador.bibliotecas.uc.cl/primo-explore/search?vid=56PUC_INST&lang=es_CL&mode=advanced

title word

Pontifical Gregorian University “Gregoriana” (Society of Jesus; “Jesuits”)

https://oseegenius.unigre.it/pug/?l=en

title word

Pontifical Lateran University “Lateranum” (Diocese of Rome)

http://oseegenius.pul.it/pul/advanced?a=reset

title word

Pontifical Salesian University “Salesianum” (Society of St. Francis de Sales; “Salesians of Don Bosco”)

http://webopacups.urbe.it/libero/WebOpac.cls

title word

Pontifical University of St. Anthony “Antonianum” (Order of Friars Minor; “Franciscans”)

http://oseegenius2.urbe.it/ant/advanced?a=reset

title word

Pontifical University of St. Thomas Aquinas “Angelicum” (Order of Preachers; “Dominicans”)

https://pust.urbe.it/cgi-bin/koha/opac-search.pl

title word

Pontifical University of the Holy Cross “Santa Croce” (Personal Prelature of the Holy Cross; “Opus Dei”)

http://catalogo.pusc.it/cgi-bin/koha/opac-search.pl

title word

Pontifical Xavierian University, Bogotá

http://biblos.javeriana.edu.co/uhtbin/cgisirsi/x/SIRSI/0/57/60/495/X?user_id=WEBSERVER

title word

Pontifícia Universidade Católica do Rio de Janeiro, Rio de Janeiro

http://www.dbd.puc-rio.br/pergamum/biblioteca/index.php?resolution2=1024_1&tipo_pesquisa=&filtro_bibliotecas=&filtro_obras=&word=shoah

title word

Pontifical Orient Institute

http://unipio.org/en/library/catalog/

title word

* * *

Notes

1 If not specified otherwise, downloads are as of August 19, 2019.

2 See Manfred Gerstenfeld, The Abuse of Holocaust Memory: Distortions and Responses. Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs and Anti-Defamation League, 2009, available at https://jcpa.org/text/holocaustabuse.pdf.

3 https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/12/us/holocaust-education.html.

4 http://www.claimscon.org/austria-study.

5 http://www.claimscon.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/Cross-Country-Topline_Austria-US-Canada_5.2.19.pdf.

6 Friedlander, Henry. The Origins of Nazi Genocide: From Euthanasia to the Final Solution. University of North Carolina Press, 2000.

7 See https://jcpa.org/article/migration-from-the-muslim-world-to-the-west-its-most-recent-trends-and-effects.

8 On the literature about earlier public opinion surveys on Shoah knowledge and awareness, see, among others, Jedwab, Jack. “Measuring Holocaust knowledge and its impact: A Canadian case study.“ Prospects 40.2 (2010): 273-287; Jedwab, Jack. “Measuring Holocaust knowledge and its relationship to attitudes towards diversity in Spain, Canada, Germany, and the United States.“ In: As the Witnesses Fall Silent: 21st Century Holocaust Education in Curriculum, Policy and Practice. Springer, Cham, 2015. 321-334; Bischoping, Katherine. “Method and meaning in Holocaust-knowledge surveys.” Holocaust and Genocide Studies 12.3 (1998): 454-474; Bischoping, Katherine, and Andrea Kalmin. “Public opinion about comparisons to the Holocaust.” Public Opinion Quarterly (1999): 485-507; Smith, Tom W. “A review: The Holocaust denial controversy.” Public Opinion Quarterly 59.2 (1995): 269-295; Smith, Tom W., and Benjamin Schapiro. “Antisemitism in contemporary America.” American Jewish Year Book 2018. Springer, Cham, 2019. 113-161.

9 Sánchez, Antonio Muñoz. “The Friedrich Ebert Foundation and the Spanish socialists during the transition to democracy, 1975–1982.” Contemporary European History 25.1 (2016): 143-162; Rother, Bernd, and Klaus Larres, eds. “Willy Brandt and International Relations: Europe, the USA and Latin America, 1974-1992.” Bloomsbury, 2018; Pinto-Duschinsky, Michael. “Foreign political aid: The German political foundations and their US counterparts.” International Affairs 67.1 (1991): 33-63; Carothers, Thomas. Confronting the Weakest Link: Aiding Political Parties in New Democracies.” Washington, DC: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 2006.

10 Zick, Andreas, Beate Küpper, and Andreas Hövermann. Intolerance, Prejudice and Discrimination: A European Report. 2011. Friedrich Ebert Foundation, available at https://library.fes.de/pdf-files/do/07908-20110311.pdf.

11 https://edition.cnn.com/interactive/2018/11/europe/antisemitism-poll-2018-intl.

12 https://edition.cnn.com/interactive/2018/11/europe/antisemitism-poll-2018-intl.

13 https://edition.cnn.com/interactive/2018/11/europe/antisemitism-poll-2018-intl.

14 Exact wording of the CNN survey, see https://edition.cnn.com/interactive/2018/11/europe/antisemitism-poll-2018-intl.

15 https://edition.cnn.com/interactive/2018/11/europe/antisemitism-poll-2018-intl.

16 http://www.claimscon.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/Cross-Country-Topline_Austria-US-Canada_5.2.19.pdf.

17 http://www.claimscon.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/Cross-Country-Topline_Austria-US-Canada_5.2.19.pdf.

18 http://www.claimscon.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/Cross-Country-Topline_Austria-US-Canada_5.2.19.pdf.

19 https://science.orf.at/tags/1938; Gehl, Jürgen. Austria, Germany, and the Anschluss, 1931-1938. Oxford University Press, 1963; Luža Radomír. Austro-German Relations in the Anschluss Era. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1975; Brook-Shepherd, Gordon. Anschluss: The Rape of Austria. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1976.

20 https://global100.adl.org/info/holocaust_info.

21 Exceptions are Primor, Avi, and Yvette Shumacher. “Crying wolf? A reevaluation of antisemitism in Europe.” Israel Journal of Foreign Affairs 2.2 (2008): 35-44; and Wetzel, Juliane. Antisemitism and Holocaust Remembrance: Perceptions of the Holocaust in Europe and Muslim Communities. Springer, Dordrecht, 2013. 19-28; in general terms: Jikeli, Günther, and Joëlle Allouche-Benayoun, eds. Perceptions of the Holocaust in Europe and Muslim Communities: Sources, Comparisons and Educational Challenges. Vol. 5. Springer Science & Business Media, 2012; Jikeli, Günther. “L’antisémitisme en milieux et pays musulmans: Débats et travaux autour d’un processus complexe.” Revue dhistoire moderne contemporaine 2 (2015): 89-114; Schnapper, Dominique, Paul Salmona, and Perrine Simon-Nahum. Réflexions sur l’antisémitisme. Odile Jacob, 2016; Ben-Rafael, Eliezer. “Belgian Jews and neo-Antisemitism.” Contemporary Jewry 37.2 (2017): 275-293.

22 https://global100.adl.org/info/holocaust_info.

23 https://global100.adl.org/info/holocaust_info.

24 https://global100.adl.org/public/ADL-Global-100-Executive-Summary2015.pdf and https://global100.adl.org/public/ADL-Global-100-Executive-Summary.pdf.

25 https://global100.adl.org/public/ADL-Global-100-Executive-Summary2015.pdf and https://global100.adl.org/public/ADL-Global-100-Executive-Summary.pdf,

26 Special Eurobarometer, 484, “Perceptions of Antisemitism.” January 2019, available at https://ec.europa.eu/commfrontoffice/publicopinion/index.cfm/Survey/getSurveyDetail/search/antisemitism/surveyKy/2220.

27 Jikeli, Gunther. Antisemitic attitudes among Muslims in Europe: A survey review. New York: Institute for the Study of Global Antisemitism and Policy, 2015; Koopmans, Ruud. “Religious fundamentalism and hostility against out-groups: A comparison of Muslims and Christians in Western Europe.” Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies 41.1 (2015): 33-57; Jikeli, Günther. European Muslim Antisemitism: Why Young Urban Males Say They Don’t Like Jews. Indiana University Press, 2015; Jikeli, Günther. “Explaining the discrepancy of antisemitic acts and attitudes in 21st century France.” Contemporary Jewry 37.2 (2017): 257-273; Jikeli, Günther. “Antisemitic acts and attitudes in contemporary France: The effects on French Jews.” Antisemitism Studies 2.2 (2018): 297-320; Verkuyten, Maykel. “Religious fundamentalism and radicalization among Muslim minority youth in Europe.” European Psychologist 23 (2018):  21-31. https://doi.org/10.1027/1016-9040/a000314.

28 Among the vast literature on the subject, we particularly mention here: Bauer, Yehuda, and Nili Keren. A History of the Holocaust. Rev. ed. New York: Franklin Watts, 2001; Bauer, Yehuda. The Death of the Shtetl. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2011; Bauer, Yehuda, and Nathan Rotenstreich. The Holocaust as Historical Experience: Essays and a Discussion. New York: Holmes & Meier, 1981; Bauer, Yehuda. Out of the Ashes: The Impact of American Jews on Post-Holocaust European Jewry. 1st ed. Oxford: Pergamon Press, 1989.

29 Chang, Iris. The Rape of Nanking: The Forgotten Holocaust of World War II. New York: Basic Books, 2011.

30 Stannard, David E. American Holocaust: Columbus and the Conquest of the New World. New York: Oxford University Press, 1992.

31 Ilibagiza Immaculée, and Steve Erwin. Left to Tell: Discovering God amidst the Rwandan Holocaust. 1st ed. Carlsbad, CA: Hay House, 2014.

32 http://classify.oclc.org/classify2.

33 https://www.haaretz.com/jewish/holocaust-remembrance-day/.premium-shoah-how-a-biblical-term-became-the-hebrew-word-for-holocaust-1.5236861.

34 https://www.worldcat.org/advancedsearch. The number of items in the OCLC Worldcat with the Hebrew word השואה written in Hebrew in the title is currently 3,337.

35 Narin, Francis, and Kimberly S. Hamilton. “Bibliometric performance measures.” Scientometrics 36.3 (1996): 293-310; Nederhof, Anton J. “Bibliometric monitoring of research performance in the social sciences and the humanities: A review.” Scientometrics 66.1 (2006): 81-100.

36 Aguillo, Isidro F., Jose Luis Ortega, and Mario Fernández. “Webometric ranking of world universities: Introduction, methodology, and future developments.” Higher Education in Europe 33.2-3 (2008): 233-244.

37 Tausch, Arno. “On the Global Impact of Selected Social-Policy Publishers in More than 100 Countries.” Journal of Scholarly Publishing 42.4 (2011): 476-513; Tausch, Arno. “Die Buchpublikationen der Nobelpreis-Ökonomen und die führenden Buchverlage der Disziplin. Eine bibliometrische Analyse.” Bibliotheksdienst 51.3-4 (2015): 339-373; Tausch, Arno. “The global publishing trajectory of a European political science community: Indices, trends, and implications.” Entelequia: revista interdisciplinar, ISSN-e 1885-6985, Nº. Extra 19, 2016 (Ejemplar dedicado a: Especial X Aniversario), págs. 261-324, https://dialnet.unirioja.es/servlet/articulo?codigo=6166354; Tausch, Arno. “The market power of global scientific publishing companies in the age of globalization: An analysis based on the OCLC Worldcat.” Journal of Globalization Studies 9.2 (November 2018) DOI: https://doi.org/10.30884/jogs/2018.02.05

https://www.oclc.org/de/worldcat.html.

38 Vinkler, Péter. The Evaluation of Research by Scientometric Indicators. Oxford: Chandos, 2010; Bonitz, M. “Scientometry, Bibliometry, Informetry.” Zentralblatt fur Bibliothekswesen 96.1 (1982): 19-24; Braun, Tibor, Glänzel Wolfgang, and Schubert András. Scientometric Indicators: A 32 Country Comparative Evaluation of Publishing Performance and Citation Impact. Singapore: World Scientific, 1985.

39 Delling, Alexandra. “Bibliometrie als Bewertungsgrundlage für Wissenschaftler: Eine neue Kernkompetenz in Bibliotheken.” Diss., Fachhochschule Potsdam, 2011; Ochsner, Michael, Sven E. Hug, and Hans-Dieter Daniel, eds. Research Assessment in the Humanities: Towards Criteria and Procedures. Switzerland: Springer Open, 2016; Todeschini, Roberto, and Alberto Baccini. Handbook of Bibliometric Indicators: Quantitative Tools for Studying and Evaluating Research. Weinheim, Germany: Wiley-VCH, 2016.

40 Deutsch, Karl W. The Nerves of Government: Models of Political Communication and Control; with a new Introduction. New York: Free Press, 1966.

41 White, Howard D., et al. “Libcitations: A measure for comparative assessment of book publications in the humanities and social sciences.” Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology 60.6 (2009): 1083-1096; White, Howard D., and Alesia A. Zuccala. “Libcitations, worldcat, cultural impact, and fame.” Journal of the Association for Information Science and Technology 69.12 (2018): 1502-1512; Zuccala, Alesia, Maarten van Someren, and Maurits van Bellen. “A machine‐learning approach to coding book reviews as quality indicators: Toward a theory of megacitation.” Journal of the Association for Information Science and Technology 65.11 (2014): 2248-2260.

42 White, Howard D. et al. Libcitations.

43 https://try.alexa.com/home-search-d-062419?utm_expid=.gLtugKkDRLep84LhGhmilQ.2&utm_referrer=https%3A%2F%2Fnortonsafe.search.ask.com%2Fweb%3Fq%3Dalexa%26o%3DAPN11910%26chn%3D1000%26guid%3D543217D4-63A3-419C-B0C7-6FB5E5661DCF%26doi%3D2016-11-08%26ver%3D22.8.0.50%26prt%3DNSBU%26geo%3DUS%26locale%3Dde_US%26ctype%3D%26tpr%3D121. Other tools are discussed in Redkina, N. S. “The development tendencies of web analytics tools.” Automatic Documentation and Mathematical Linguistics 51.3 (2017): 112-116.

44 Hopkinson, Alan. “Library automation in developing countries: The last 25 years.” Information Development 25.4 (2009): 304-312; Bhattacharya, Partha. “Advances in digital library initiatives: A developing country perspective.” International Information & Library Review 36.3 (2004): 165-175; Ducheva, Dilyana P., and Diane Rasmussen Pennington. “Resource description and access in Europe: implementations and perceptions.” Journal of Librarianship and Information Science 51.2 (2019): 387-402; Samea, Laila. “Academic library consortia in Arab countries: An investigating study of origins, development, and services.” International Journal of Library and Information Science 7.7 (2015): 130-147; Kurzman, Charles, and John D. Martin III. “The hidden heritage of Arab libraries: Online catalogs and institutional barriers to discoverability.” IFLA Journal 44.4 (2018): 300-310.

45 https://kvk.bibliothek.kit.edu/index.html?lang=en&digitalOnly=0&embedFulltitle=0&newTab=0.

46 http://shareill.org/finding-aids-and-tools/gateways-and-union-catalogs.

47 The Central American Metabase catalogue integrates all countries of the region; and the Saudi Arabian-led Aruc project offers access to the libraries of 25 countries. We also found useful library catalogue links in the list http://www.librarydir.org.

48 German academics defend this debacle by referring to the German Constitution (Grundgesetz), assigning the competence for science policy to the federal state. But Germany would not be Germany if there were not an exception to this rule, insofar as several Länder and their library union catalogues have now teamed up with already existing union catalogues to aggregate to some bigger conglomerates, whose membership criteria seem to be beyond the capabilities of even a mathematics Field Medalist to explain. For a map of the existing German union catalogues, see https://de.Wikipedia.org/wiki/Bibliotheksverbund.

49 Hopkinson, Alan. “Library automation in developing countries: The last 25 years.” Information Development 25.4 (2009): 304-312; Bhattacharya, Partha. “Advances in digital library initiatives: A developing country perspective.” International Information & Library Review 36.3 (2004): 165-175; Ducheva, Dilyana P., and Diane Rasmussen Pennington. “Resource description and access in Europe: Implementations and perceptions.” Journal of Librarianship and Information Science 51.2 (2019): 387-402; Samea, Laila. “Academic library consortia in Arab countries: An investigating study of origins, development, and services.” International Journal of Library and Information Science 7.7 (2015): 130-147; Kurzman, Charles, and John D. Martin III. “The hidden heritage of Arab libraries: Online catalogs and institutional barriers to discoverability.” IFLA Journal 44.4 (2018): 300-310.

50 https://kvk.bibliothek.kit.edu/index.html?lang=en&digitalOnly=0&embedFulltitle=0&newTab=0.

51 https://catalog.loc.gov/vwebv/searchAdvanced.

52 http://shareill.org/finding-aids-and-tools/national-archives-and-libraries.

53 http://www.iberoamericadigital.net/es/Participantes.

54 https://en.Wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_national_and_state_libraries.

55 https://publiclibraries.com/world.

56 The theoretical literature on the subject includes, inter alia, Missingham, Roxanne. “Parliamentary library and research services in the 21st century: A Delphi study.” IFLA Journal 37.1 (2011): 52-61; Dennison, Madelaine. “Working for parliamentarians, contributing to Parliament.” Legal Information Management 11.3 (2011): 176-181; Vurgan, Yuval. “’Let’s Talk Numbers’: Parliamentary Research in Educational Affairs in Light of a Political Demand for Quantification – the Knesset in Comparative Perspective.” Science, Numbers and Politics. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham, 2019. 331-364; Alotaibi, Jamella Hamdan. “Information and communication technologies in the Kuwaiti Parliament: A user acceptance and adoption study.” Diss., University of Brighton, 2017; Bosch, Elvira et al., “Biblioteques i serveis de recerca parlamentaris: estratègies d’adaptació a les necessitats d’informació dels parlaments.” BiD: textos universitaris de biblioteconomia i documentació 27 (2011): 6.

57 https://www.bcn.cl/wdlrsp/home.

58 https://www.ifla.org/services-for-parliaments.

59 Thus the German Bundestag documentation on the subject suggested by https://www.ifla.org/node/8758 leads nowhere: it does not exist anymore.

60 To unearth the library catalogues of the different parliamentary libraries of the world, researchers could continue to carry on the research of this article, using the website https://www.ifla.org/node/6166. But the only current reliable collection of websites with a usable library catalogue really seems to be the World Directory of Library and Research Services for Parliaments (designed and built by the National Library of Congress, Chile), finally used in this study.

61 For a theoretical perspective, see Leneman, Nina K. “Collections management criteria of the United Nations and specialized agencies collections in the Dag Hammarskjold Library.” International Journal of Legal Information 12.5-6 (1984): 195-214; Weiss, Thomas G. The United Nations and Changing World Politics. Routledge, 2018.

62 The list contained on Wikipedia (https://en.Wikipedia.org/wiki/Pontifical_university) is quite useful.

63 https://www.Worldcat.org; in general terms: Jordan, Jay. “OCLC and the emerging worldwide library co-operative.” Library Management 24.3 (2003): 107-115; Turner, Amy H. “OCLC WorldCat as a cooperative catalog.” Cataloging & Classification Quarterly 48.2-3 (2010): 271-278; https://www.oclc.org/en/worldcat/inside-worldcat.html#.

64 https://www.oclc.org/de/Worldcat.html.

65 https://www.oclc.org/en/firstsearch.html.

66 http://classify.oclc.org/classify2/ClassifyDemo?search-title-txt=holocaust&startRec=0.

67 Tausch, Arno. “The global publishing trajectory of a European political science community: Indices, trends, and implications.” Entelequia: revista interdisciplinar, ISSN-e 1885-6985, Nº. Extra 19, 2016 (Ejemplar dedicado a: Especial X Aniversario), págs. 261-324, https://dialnet.unirioja.es/servlet/articulo?codigo=6166354; Tausch, Arno. “The market power of global scientific publishing companies in the age of globalization: An analysis based on the OCLC Worldcat.” Journal of Globalization Studies 9.2 (November 2018) DOI: https://doi.org/10.30884/jogs/2018.02.05.

68 Tausch. “The market power of global scientific publishing companies.”

https://www.oclc.org/de/worldcat.html.

69 http://classify.oclc.org/classify2.

70 https://www.Worldcat.org/advancedsearch.

71 https://tepuna.on.Worldcat.org/discovery

72 Tausch, Arno. “The market power of global scientific publishing companies in the age of globalization: An analysis based on the OCLC Worldcat” (June 16, 2018). Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3197632 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3197632.

73 http://www.shanghairanking.com/ARWU2017.html.

74 http://www.scimagoir.com.

75 https://www.elsevier.com/solutions/Scopus.

76 https://www.oclc.org/en/contacts/libraries.html.

77 The global journal-ranking system https://www.scimagojr.com, powered by Scopus, mentions the journal as the only Shoah research journal included in the globally encompassing Scopus journal index. The University of Barcelona Information Matrix for the Analysis of Journals (MIAR; http://miar.ub.edu/) mentions two other journals with the word Shoah in the title, the French-language publications Les Cahiers de la Shoah and Revue d’Histoire de la Shoah. The database also mentions four journals with the word Holocaust in the title: Dimensions: A Journal of Holocaust Studies, the already-mentioned Holocaust and Genocide Studies, the Jahrbuch zur Geschichte und Wirkung des Holocaust, and the Journal of Holocaust Education. The MIAR database ranks journals by their inclusion in international scientific indices and abstract services. The journal with the highest Scimago and MIAR impact, Holocaust and Genocide Studies, by its inclusion in many indices (IBZ Online, Periodicals Index Online, American History and Life, HeinOnline-Law Journal Library, Jewish Studies Source, Violence & Abuse Abstracts, ATLA Religion Database, Historical Abstracts, MLA – Modern Language Association Database, Political Science Complete, Sociological Abstracts, Worldwide Political Science Abstracts) and its longevity of 33 years of continued publication, is attributed a Journal Quality Index, called ICDS, of 11.0 by the MIAR journal database.

78 https://www.scimagojr.com. The Scimago Journal & Country Rank analysis program, based on the Scopus database, run by Elsevier, is based on 34,100 titles from more than 5,000 international publishers and mentions country performance metrics from 239 countries worldwide. Scimago is a research group from the Spanish research centers Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas (CSIC) in Madrid, the University of Granada, and the University Carlos III in Madrid.

79 http://miar.ub.edu. MIAR evaluates a staggering number of more than 44,000 scientific journals from around the world. The project is run by Barcelona University in Spain.

80 https://www.worldcat.org/title/jewish-political-studies-review/oclc/237788397&referer=brief_results.

81 https://www.worldcat.org/title/jewish-political-studies-review/oclc/237788397&referer=brief_results.

82 In scientific terms, South Africa with its world-class universities and libraries is definitely part of the West. OCLC-Worldcat research often reveals that libraries in countries such as Botswana, Lesotho, Namibia, and Kenya also contain standard global scientific literature. This was the reason we chose 4000 kilometers from Cape Town as the outer boundary of Southern Africa.

83 There are no OCLC member libraries in the Congo, Rwanda, Burundi, Mozambique, and Tanzania; a single technological research library in Angola, but several OCLC member libraries in Namibia, Lesotho, Botswana, and Kenya.

84 https://opac.vatlib.it/all.

85 Future research, using our methdology, could also use internet user data from the following source: https://www.nationmaster.com/country-info/stats/Media/Internet-users.

86 The standard determinants of socioeconomic development, usually used today in the literature, are presented in Tausch, Arno, and Almas Heshmati. Globalization, the Human Condition, and Sustainable Development in the Twenty-First Century: Cross-National Perspectives and European Implications. London, New York, and Delhi: Anthem Press, 2013.

87 Tausch, Arno. “Migration from the Muslim world to the West: Its most recent trends and effects.” Jewish Political Studies Review 30 1-2 (2019): 65-225.

88 https://www.academia.edu/37568941/Migration_from_the_Muslim_World_to_the_West_Its_Most_Recent_Trends_and_Effects.

89 Tausch, Arno, and Almas Heshmati. Globalization, the Human Condition, and Sustainable Development in the Twenty-First Century: Cross-National Perspectives and European Implications. Anthem Studies in Development and Globalization. London: Anthem Press, 2012.

90 Tausch, Arno, Almas Heshmati, and Qarawī Hishām. The Political Algebra of Global Value Change: General Models and Implications for the Muslim World. Economic Issues, Problems and Perspectives. New York: Nova, 2017.

91 https://www.ibm.com/il-en/marketplace/spss-statistics. See also the websites of IBM SPSS for a great number of other countries, for example, Egypt: https://www.ibm.com/eg-en/analytics/spss-statistics-software; United Arab Emirates: https://www.ibm.com/ae-en/analytics/spss-statistics-software; and so on.

92 Benz, Wolfgang. Die Protokolle der Weisen von Zion: die Legende von der jüdischen Weltverschwörung. CH Beck, 2007.

93 https://www.ebsco.com.

94 Interestingly enough, the electronic holdings of both national libraries under consideration here, i.e., Egypt and Saudi Arabia, are not covered in their national union catalogue.

95 See https://aleteia.org/2018/05/10/the-vatican-in-numbers. Catholic pontiffs, it seems, often have a critical attitude about the efficiency and work ethics of their own staff in the Vatican. Looking at the figures in this article, one cannot but express a certain sympathy with such a perspective. Pope John XXIII is said to have remarked, when asked how many people work in the Vatican, “about half of them.” Pope Francis also went on the record severely criticizing the Vatican bureaucracy, even accusing it of serving a “degraded logic of small cliques” and complaining of “spiritual Alzheimer’s” and “the terrorism of gossip,” see https://www.ncronline.org/news/vatican/pope-upbraids-vatican-bureaucracy-serve-world-not-degraded-logic-small-cliques and https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-30577368. At any rate, the dismal library performance of the papal institutions in Rome must be redressed.

96 Lindenberger, Herbert. One Family’s Shoah: Victimization, Resistance, Survival in Nazi Europe. Springer, 2013.

97 Litvak, Meir. “The Islamic Republic of Iran and the Holocaust: Anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism.” Journal of Israeli History 25.1 (2006): 267-284; Whine, Michael. “Expanding Holocaust denial and legislation against it.” Jewish Political Studies Review (2008): 57-77; Küntzel, Matthias. Unholy Hatreds: Holocaust Denial and Antisemitism in Iran. No. 8. Vidal Sassoon International Center for the Study of Antisemitism, 2007.

98 Ritter, Harry. “From Habsburg to Hitler to Haider: The peculiarities of Austrian history.” German Studies Review 22.2 (1999): 269-284.

99 See, among others, Ocampo, José Antonio, Juan Martin, and United Nations Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean. Globalization and Development: A Latin American and Caribbean Perspective. Latin American Development Forum Series. Palo Alto, CA: Stanford Social Sciences, 2003; Eakin, Hallie, and Maria Carmen Lemos. “Adaptation and the state: Latin America and the challenge of capacity-building under globalization.” Global Environmental Change 16.1 (2006): 7-18; Bielschowsky, Ricardo. “Evolución de las ideas de la CEPAL.” Revista de la CEPAL (1998), available at https://www.cepal.org/es/publicaciones/37962-revista-la-cepal-nro-extraordinario-cepal-cincuenta-anos. The website of CEPAL/ECLAC is https://www.cepal.org/en.

100 Feuerherdt, Alex, Florian Markl, Esther Schapira, Georg M. Hafner, and Hentrich und Hentrich Verlag Berlin. Vereinte Nationen Gegen Israel: Wie die Uno den Jüdischen Staat delegitimiert. 1. Auflage ed. Berlin: Hentrich & Hentrich Verlag, 2018.

101 We would not like to create the impression that we want to underestimate the relevance of issues such as gender and discrimination, but the Council of Europe library holds 373 titles on “gender,” 1,034 titles on “discrimination,” but only 165 titles on “anti-Semitism”; see http://normalsup.coe.int/uhtbin/cgisirsi.exe/?ps=tb3ysTuYcB/ARCHIVES/X/60/79/X.

102 http://classify.oclc.org/classify2/ClassifyDemo?search-title-txt=shoah&startRec=0; resulting in Goldhagen, Daniel Jonah. Hitler’s Willing Executioners: Ordinary Germans and the Holocaust. 1st Vintage Books ed. New York: Vintage Books, 1997; Friedlander, Henry, and Mazal Holocaust Collection. The Origins of Nazi Genocide: From Euthanasia to the Final Solution. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1995; Lower, Wendy. Hitler’s Furies: German Women in the Nazi Killing Fields. London: Vintage Books, 2014.

103 Brooks, Sam, Paul Donovan, and Clint Rumble. “Developing nations, the digital divide and research databases.” Serials Review 31.4 (2005): 270-278, available at https://www.ebscohost.com/uploads/imported/thisTopic-dbTopic-873.pdf; see also Cruz-Jesus, Frederico et al. “Assessing the pattern between economic and digital development of countries.” Information Systems Frontiers 19.4 (2017): 835-854; Cruz-Jesus, Frederico, Tiago Oliveira, and Fernando Bacao. “The global digital divide: Evidence and drivers.” Journal of Global Information Management (JGIM) 26.2 (2018): 1-26.

104 See https://mfa.gov.il/mfa/foreignpolicy/peace/guide/pages/declaration%20of%20establishment%20of%20state%20of%20israel.aspx. For the analysis, the author also refers to Ofer, Dalia. “The strength of remembrance: Commemorating the Holocaust during the first decade of Israel.” Jewish Social Studies 6.2 (2000): 24-55; Wistrich, Robert. “Anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism.” Jewish Political Studies Review (2004): 27-31; Cannon, Ellen. “The BDS and Anti-BDS Campaigns.” Jewish Political Studies Review 30.1-2 (2019): 5-64.

105 Bensoussan, Georges. Histoire de la Shoah. Presses Universitaires de France-PUF, 2006; Bensoussan, Georges. Juifs en pays arabes. Le grand déracinement 1850-1975: Le grand déracinement 1850-1975. Tallandier, 2013.

106 The Arabic Union Catalogue offered a free search at http://www.aruc.org/en/web/auc/general-search (downloads as of April 11, 2017). The images referring to this website were downloaded at this date. Meanwhile, Aruc changed its internet presence and no longer provides many of the search opportunities offered by the older version. Currently the English portal of Aruc is to be found at https://www.aruc.org/en/home. It contains library holdings from major Arab countries, especially on the Arabian Peninsula but also in Algeria, Oman, Sudan, Yemen, and so on.  

107 UNDP, Arab Human Development Report 2002: Creating Opportunities for Future Generations. New York: UNDP, 2002, available at http://hdr.undp.org/en/reports/regionalreports/arabstates/name,3140,en.html.

108 http://www.aruc.org/main.aspx and the free search at http://www.aruc.org/_Search.aspx?PrK=429&Dep=1&lev=2 (downloads as of April 11, 2017).

109 http://www.thejerusalemfund.org/www.thejerusalemfund.org/carryover/documents/charter.html. In a similar “spirit,” see the anti-Semitic former radio station and now website Radio Islam http://www.radioislam.org/protocols/quote-eng.htm. It was founded by a Moroccan exile, who was a Moroccan army officer involved in a coup attempt against the pro-Western Moroccan monarchy in 1972. Rami fled and received political asylum in Sweden; see http://www.adl.org/poisoning_web/rami.asp. Reading the details of the case in Europe in 2019, it is important to recall that all this is not from a propaganda clip of a right-wing populist anti-immigration party, but really is what had happened in liberal Sweden, making a mockery of everything that terms like “asylum,” “human rights,” and so on stand for. For producers of documentary films, a rich and promising field of activity…

110 http://www.worldcat.org/search?q=ti%3Aelders+of+zion&fq=ln%3Aara&qt=advanced&dblist=638.

111 Translations as given by the Aruc library consortium (downloads as of April 11, 2017).

112 https://opac.vatlib.it/all.

113 Modras, Ronald. The Catholic Church and Antisemitism. Routledge, 2005; Michael, Robert. A History of Catholic Antisemitism: The Dark Side of the Church. Springer, 2008; Spicer, Kevin P. Hitler’s Priests: Catholic Clergy and National Socialism. Northern Illinois University Press, 2017; see also the prophetic book by Maritain, Jacques. Antisemitism. Geoffrey Bles, 1939, written on the eve of World War II.

114 https://press.vatican.va/content/salastampa/en/bollettino/pubblico/2018/01/29/180129c.html.

115 https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/quot-we-remember-quot-vatican-reflection-on-the-shoah.

116 https://press.vatican.va/content/salastampa/en/bollettino/pubblico/2018/01/29/180129c.html.

117 The Dominicans outdid other congregations in their role of supporting the Inquisition. There is a vast literature on this subject, among others: Ames, Christine Caldwell. Righteous Persecution: Inquisition, Dominicans, and Christianity in the Middle Ages. University of Pennsylvania Press, 2009; Hamilton, Bernard. The Medieval Inquisition. New York: Holmes & Meier, 1981; Tavuzzi, Michael. Renaissance Inquisitors: Dominican Inquisitors and Inquisitorial Districts in Northern Italy, 1474-1527. Brill, 2007; Baigent, Michael, and Richard Leigh. The Inquisition. Penguin UK, 2000.

118 http://www.vatican.va/archive/hist_councils/ii_vatican_council/documents/vat-ii_decl_19651028_nostra-aetate_ge.html.

119 https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/quot-we-remember-quot-vatican-reflection-on-the-shoah.

120 Scholder, Klaus. A Requiem for Hitler: And Other New Perspectives on the German Church Struggle. Wipf & Stock, 2008; Besier, Gerhard. “Anti-Bolshevism and Antisemitism: The Catholic Church in Germany and National Socialist ideology 1936–1937.” Journal of Ecclesiastical History 43.3 (1992): 447-456; Braham, Randolph L. “Remembering and forgetting: The Vatican, the German Catholic hierarchy, and the Holocaust.” Holocaust and Genocide Studies 13.2 (1999): 222-251; Milh, Anton. “Zwischen Seelsorge und Politik: Katholische Bischöfe in der NS-Zeit.” Ed. Maria Anna Zumholz and Michael Hirschfeld. Münster: Aschendorff Verlag, 2018.

121 As to the data, readers are referred to the freely available documentation at https://www.academia.edu/37568941/Migration_from_the_Muslim_World_to_the_West_Its_Most_Recent_Trends_and_Effects. The explanatory variables used in our analysis and the literature on which they are based are debated extensively in Tausch, Arno, and Almas Heshmati. Globalization, the Human Condition, and Sustainable Development.

122 Alesina, Alberto, and Eliana La Ferrara. “Who trusts others?” Journal of Public Economics 85.2 (2002): 207-234; Alesina, Alberto, and Paola Giuliano. “Culture and institutions.” Journal of Economic Literature 53.4 (2015): 898-944.

123 Croft, Stuart. “‘Thy will be done’: The new foreign policy of America’s Christian Right.” International Politics 44.6 (2007): 692-710.

124 Friedländer, Saul. “The Shoah between memory and history.” Jewish Quarterly 37.1 (1990): 5-11.

125 Weiner, Sharon. “The Contribution of the Library to the Reputation of a University.” Journal of Academic Librarianship 35.1 (2009): 3-13.

126 Fröbel, Folker, Jürgen Heinrichs, and Otto Kreye. The New International Division of Labour: Structural Unemployment in Industrialised Countries and Industrialisation in Developing Countries. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1980.

127 Acedo, Clementina. “Teaching about the Shoah: Critical issues for educators.” Prospects (2010) 40: 179. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11125-010-9155-5; Friedländer, Saul. “The Shoah between memory and history.” Jewish Quarterly 37.1 (1990): 5-11.

128 All data sources and definitions available from: https://www.academia.edu/37568941/Migration_from_the_Muslim_World_to_the_West_Its_Most_Recent_Trends_and_Effects.

129 Tausch, Arno, and Almas Heshmati. Globalization, the Human Condition, and Sustainable Development.

130 Torras, Mariano, and James K. Boyce. “Income, inequality, and pollution: A reassessment of the environmental Kuznets curve.” Ecological Economics 25.2 (1998): 147-160; Kuznets, Simon. “Economic growth and income inequality.” American Economic Review 45.1 (1955): 1-28; Kuznets, Simon, and John Thomas Murphy. Modern Economic Growth: Rate, Structure, and Spread. Vol. 2. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1966; Tausch, Arno, and Almas Heshmati. Globalization, the Human Condition, and Sustainable Development.

131 Devarajan, Shantayanan, Vinaya Swaroop, and Heng-fu Zou. “The composition of public expenditure and economic growth.” Journal of Monetary Economics 37.2 (1996): 313-344; Tausch, Arno, and Almas Heshmati. Globalization, the Human Condition, and Sustainable Development.

132 Hatton, Timothy J., and Jeffrey G. Williamson, eds. Migration and the International Labor Market, 1850-1939. Taylor & Francis, 1994; Tausch, Arno, and Almas Heshmati. Globalization, the Human Condition, and Sustainable Development.

133 Tausch, Arno, and Almas Heshmati. Globalization, the Human Condition, and Sustainable Development; Tausch, Arno. “Migration from the Muslim World to the West.”

134 Anderson, Christopher J., and M. Shawn Reichert. “Economic benefits and support for membership in the EU: A cross-national analysis.” Journal of Public Policy 15.3 (1995): 231-249; Tausch, Arno, and Almas Heshmati. Globalization, the Human Condition, and Sustainable Development.

135 Feldstein, Martin. “The political economy of the European Economic and Monetary Union: Political sources of an economic liability.” Journal of Economic Perspectives 11.4 (1997): 23-42; Brunnermeier, Markus Konrad, Harold James, and Jean-Pierre Landau. The Euro and the Battle of Ideas. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2016; Pelagidis, Theodore, and Michael Mitsopoulos. Who’s to Blame for Greece? How Austerity and Populism Are Destroying a Country with High Potential. 2nd ed. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan US, 2018; Tausch, Arno, and Almas Heshmati. Globalization, the Human Condition, and Sustainable Development.

136 See Tausch, Arno, and Almas Heshmati. Globalization, the Human Condition, and Sustainable Development. Because of the skewness of the original national library holdings indicator (original values: see Table 6), we took the fourth root of the original values. The explanatory variables are available as a machine-readable data file from https://www.academia.edu/37568941/Migration_from_the_Muslim_World_to_the_West_Its_Most_Recent_Trends_and_Effects.

137 See http://www.cepii.fr/CEPII/fr/bdd_modele/presentation.asp?id=6; as to the machine-readable version of our explanatory variables, see https://www.academia.edu/37568941/Migration_from_the_Muslim_World_to_the_West_Its_Most_Recent_Trends_and_Effects.

138 See McCleary, Rachel M., and Robert J. Barro. “Religion and political economy in an international panel.” Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion 45.2 (2006): 149-175; McCleary, Rachel M., and Robert J. Barro. “Religion and economy.” Journal of Economic Perspectives 20.2 (2006): 49-72; Noland, Marcus. “Religion and economic performance.” World Development 33.8 (2005): 1215-1232; as to the machine-readable version of our explanatory variables, see https://www.academia.edu/37568941/Migration_from_the_Muslim_World_to_the_West_Its_Most_Recent_Trends_and_Effects.

139 See Schrag, Carl. “American Jews and Evangelical Christians: Anatomy of a changing relationship.” Jewish Political Studies Review 17.1-2 (2005): 171-181; furthermore Mead, Walter Russell. “The new Israel and the old: Why gentile Americans back the Jewish state.” Foreign Affairs (2008): 28-46; Kote, Saagar, and Madhumati Deshpande. “Influence of religion on the foreign policies of the US and West Asian states.” IUP Journal of International Relations 12.2 (2018): 16-25; for a critical perspective on Evangelicalism see, among others, Cooper, Danny. Neoconservatism and American Foreign Policy: A Critical Analysis. Routledge, 2010; Dittmer, Jason, and Tristan Sturm, eds. Mapping the End Times: American Evangelical Geopolitics and Apocalyptic Visions. Routledge, 2016; Ariel, Yaakov. Philosemites or Antisemites? Evangelical Christian Attitudes toward Jews, Judaism and the State of Israel. No. 20. Vidal Sassoon International Center for the Study of Antisemitism, 2002; Ariel, Yaakov. “Jewish Suffering and Christian Salvation: The Evangelical-Fundamentalist Holocaust Memoirs.” Holocaust and Genocide Studies 6.1 (1991): 63-78; Durham, Martin. “Evangelical Protestantism and foreign policy in the United States after September 11.” Patterns of Prejudice 38.2 (2004): 145-158.

140 See https://global100.adl.org.

141 https://www.aeaweb.org/journals/aer; https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/american-political-science-review; https://journals.sagepub.com/home/asr.

142 Larivière, Vincent, Stefanie Haustein, and Philippe Mongeon. “The oligopoly of academic publishers in the digital era.” PLOS ONE 10.6 (2015): e0127502, available at https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0127502.

143 http://wokinfo.com.

144 https://www.sciencedirect.com/search/advanced.

145 https://journals.sagepub.com/search/advanced.

146 https://link.springer.com/advanced-search.

147 https://www.tandfonline.com/search/advanced.

148 https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/search/advanced.

149 Dill, David D., and Maarja Soo. “Academic quality, league tables, and public policy: A cross-national analysis of university ranking systems.” Higher Education 49.4 (2005): 495-533; Amsler, Sarah S., and Chris Bolsmann. “University ranking as social exclusion.” British Journal of Sociology of Education 33.2 (2012): 283-301; Taylor, Paul, and Richard Braddock. “International university ranking systems and the idea of university excellence.” Journal of Higher Education Policy and Management 29.3 (2007): 245-260; Nkomo, Stella M. “The seductive power of academic journal rankings: Challenges of searching for the otherwise.” Academy of Management Learning & Education 8.1 (2009): 106-121.

150 Van Raan, Anthony F.J. “Fatal attraction: Conceptual and methodological problems in the ranking of universities by bibliometric methods.” Scientometrics 62.1 (2005): 133-143.

151 Hicks, Diana. “Performance-based university research funding systems.” Research Policy 41.2 (2012): 251-261.

152 https://www.scimagojr.com.

153 Stergiou, Konstantinos I., and Stephan Lessenich. “On impact factors and university rankings: From birth to boycott.” Ethics in Science and Environmental Politics 13.2 (2014): 101-111.

154 https://www.scimagojr.com.

155 Leydesdorff, Loet, and Tobias Opthof. “Scopus’s source normalized impact per paper (SNIP) versus a journal impact factor based on fractional counting of citations.” Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology 61.11 (2010): 2365-2369; Falagas, Matthew E. et al. “Comparison of SCImago journal rank indicator with journal impact factor.” FASEB Journal 22.8 (2008): 2623-2628; Kalaitzidakis, Pantelis, Theofanis P. Mamuneas, and Thanasis Stengos. “Rankings of academic journals and institutions in economics.” Journal of the European Economic Association 1.6 (2003): 1346-1366.

156 See Mongeon, Philippe, and Adèle Paul-Hus. “The journal coverage of Web of Science and Scopus: A comparative analysis.” Scientometrics 106.1 (2016): 213-228; available at https://www.researchgate.net/publication/283722260_The_Journal_Coverage_of_Web_of_Science_and_Scopus_a_Comparative_Analysis.

157 See ibid. Link to Web of Knowledge: https://clarivate.com/products/web-of-science.

158 Ibid.

159 Martín-Martín, Alberto et al. “Google Scholar, Web of Science, and Scopus: A systematic comparison of citations in 252 subject categories.” Journal of Informetrics 12.4 (2018): 1160-1177; Falagas, Matthew E. et al. “Comparison of PubMed, Scopus, Web of Science, and Google Scholar: Strengths and weaknesses.” FASEB Journal 22.2 (2008): 338-342.

160 Data from Table 20 and https://www.scimagojr.com/journalrank.php?country=Middle%20East.

161 https://www.scimagoir.com. Literature on this and other academic institution rankings abounds, see, among others, Bornmann, Lutz, and Felix de Moya Anegón. “What proportion of excellent papers makes an institution one of the best worldwide? Specifying thresholds for the interpretation of the results of the SCImago Institutions Ranking and the Leiden Ranking.” Journal of the Association for Information Science and Technology 65.4 (2014): 732-736; Aguillo, Isidro et al. “Comparing university rankings.” Scientometrics 85.1 (2010): 243-256; Shin, Jung Cheol, Robert K. Toutkoushian, and Ulrich Teichler, eds. University Rankings: Theoretical Basis, Methodology and Impacts on Global Higher Education. Vol. 3. Springer Science & Business Media, 2011; Pusser, Brian, and Simon Marginson. “University rankings in critical perspective.” Journal of Higher Education 84.4 (2013): 544-568. We have a strong preference for the Scimago-SIR Ranking and its comprehensive methodology: https://www.scimagoir.com/methodology.php.

162 Without question, BDS, the anti-Semitic boycott movement that targets, among others, Israeli scholarly institutions, has a negative effect on academic life in the country. See Fishman, Joel. “The Red-Green Alliance and the war against American Jewry, the American-Israel alliance, and the foundations of American democracy.” Jewish Political Studies Review 30.3-4 (2019), available at https://jcpa.org/article/the-red-green-alliance-and-the-war-against-american-jewry-the-american-israel-alliance-and-the-foundations-of-american-democracy, as well as earlier studies on the subject published by the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs available at https://jcpa.org/program/combating-delegitimization-and-bds. On the rankings of Israeli academic institutions, see https://www.scimagoir.com;  especially https://www.scimagoir.com/rankings.php.

163 Just to mention a few articles on this subject: Engel, Jerome S., and Itxaso del-Palacio. “Global clusters of innovation: The case of Israel and Silicon Valley.” California Management Review 53.2 (2011): 27-49; Shachmurove, Yochanan. The Israeli Miracle: Innovation and Economic Growth (June 1, 2018). Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3261385 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3261385; Trajtenberg, Manuel. “R&D policy in Israel.” In Feldman, M.P. and Albert N. Link, eds., Innovation Policy in the Knowledge-Based Economy. Boston: Springer, 2001, 409-454.

164 https://dialnet.unirioja.es.

165 https://www.ssrn.com/index.cfm/en.

166 https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/DisplayPipPublishers.cfm.

167 https://ideas.repec.org.

168 https://mpra.ub.uni-muenchen.de.

169 https://ideas.repec.org/stats.html.

170 https://www.researchgate.net; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ResearchGate; http://fossilsandshit.com/illegal-file-hosting-site-researchgate-acquires-massive-financial-investment; https://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/researchgate.net.

171 https://www.academia.edu; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Academia.edu; https://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/academia.edu.

172 https://www.ssrn.com/index.cfm/en; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_Science_Research_Network; https://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/ssrn.com.

173 https://dialnet.unirioja.es.; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/University_of_La_Rioja#Dialnet; https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dialnet; https://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/unirioja.es.

174 https://ideas.repec.org; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Research_Papers_in_Economics; https://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/repec.org.

175 https://www.ceeol.com; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Central_and_Eastern_European_Online_Library; https://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/ceeol.com.

176 Because only one agricultural research institute in Mexico also participates in the system,  we decided to drop Mexico from the country list of the Metabase catalogue.