Sharif Kanaana is a historian, a professor of sociology and a researcher in heritage who was born in 1935 in the village of Arrabat al-Battuf. He is interested in Palestinian culture, folklore, Palestinian folk tales, and the documentation of destroyed villages.

Dating back to the mid-1970s, the Sharif Kanaana Collection contains raw materials that Sharif Kanaana had collected throughout his research career. These materials consist of several documentation cards of the daily course of Palestinian life under the Israeli Occupation, as well as several photographs and maps. The collection also includes a sub-collection of cards documenting popular anecdotes (jokes) handwritten by him.