"The SAND research group at the Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology is excited to launch a public literary database on sand. The database mainly consists of social scientific publications on the topic of sand, but also includes entries from other disciplines, ranging from economic studies of sand mafias to hard scientific investigations of coastal protection measures and climate change adaptation. The references are organised by world region which enables users to quickly find literature pertaining to a specific area or water body. Further, the database comprises studies on related topics, such as the global construction industry, geology, or land grabbing. In addition, non-academic publications related to sand were included to capture how literary and artistic work approaches the topic of sand. In total, the database currently contains over 300 references. It is supposed to constantly grow to reflect increasing interest in the material and emerging ways of writing about it."