In their collecting activities on the Middle East research libraries have largely ignored minority communities in the Middle East and their corresponding émigré communities. The Assyrian community is such a case in point. For over 100 years a variety of publications have emanated from the Assyrian Middle Eastern communities and the diaspora. With the advent of the internet and easy access to personal publishing a number of new books, journals, and non-print media in languages used by the community—Arabic, English, Neo-Aramaic, and Turkish—have appeared. At the same time, as the diaspora ages much older material is being lost because subsequent generations are no longer interested in materials in languages that they can no longer read or are unsure what to do with such material. What are the obstacles a research institution faces in documenting the Assyrian community? How does documenting the Assyrian community’s historicities create new avenues of research for scholars in the field? The experience of the Middle Eastern Division, Harvard College Library, in documenting this community over the past ten years addresses these questions.