Have you ever wondered what’s in the Library’s Southeast Asian collection, where collection items come from, and perhaps, who uses them? The Library’s Southeast Asian reference librarians receive these questions in some form on a regular basis. Joshua Kueh and Ryan Wolfson-Ford—Southeast Asian reference librarians based at the Library’s Asian Reading Room—discuss answers to these queries below.
Why does the Library have a Southeast Asian Collection?
People are sometimes surprised to learn that the Library of Congress has Southeast Asian holdings. If you consider the Library’s mission, “to engage, inspire, and inform Congress and the American people with a universal and enduring source of knowledge and creativity,” having Southeast Asian material and indeed other international collections at the Library makes a whole lot of sense, and indeed is crucial to that mission. After all, a source of knowledge and creativity could hardly be universal without taking on perspectives from around the world. The Library’s commitment to developing international collections supports its mission and can be traced back to the purchase of Thomas Jefferson’s personal collection of books in 1815 to replace the collection destroyed in 1814 when the British burned down the Capitol and the Library of Congress. Commenting on this collection, Jefferson said “I do not know that it contains any branch of science which Congress would wish to exclude from this collection…there is in fact no subject to which a member of Congress may not have occasion to refer.” What Jefferson articulated can be seen as establishing the principle of developing an all-encompassing collection.
What is in the Southeast Asian collection?
The Southeast Asian collection at the Library is in fact one of the largest in the Americas, with approximately 370,000 titles in more than 110 languages, at least 86 of which are unique to the region.
The Southeast Asian collection is made up mostly of material produced in Southeast Asia about the region: contemporary books, newspapers and periodicals, rare items (manuscripts and books), digital collections, electronic resources such as databases, web archives, and maps. These items cover a range of subjects such as art, religion, literature, law, history, politics, business, agriculture, and many others.
Who comes to use the Southeast Asian Collection?
Our readers come with different interests and needs. Many are based here in Washington, D.C., but many also come from other places around the United States and further afield. We get folks from Indonesia, the Philippines, Thailand, Vietnam, the United Kingdom, and other countries.
Most are researchers studying a variety of topics such as Islam or Buddhism in Southeast Asia, waterworks in the Philippines during the American colonial period, endangered languages, urban intellectuals and philosophers, private papers of Southeast Asian scholars (like Paul Mus), Southeast Asian maps, World War II or the Cold War in Southeast Asia, and Thai, Lao, Khmer, Burmese, Shan and Pali manuscripts. Some are interested in subjects like Filipino martial arts and Indonesian puppetry, while others simply want to learn a bit more about Southeast Asia in general or explore their own family heritage.
We also have winners of the Florence Tan Moeson (FTM) Research Fellowship come to the Library every year. The purpose of the FTM fellowship is to provide individuals with the opportunity to pursue research in the area of Asian Studies using the collections of the Asian Division and the Library of Congress in Washington, DC. The fellowships are for a minimum of five business days of research at the Library of Congress, and grants may vary from $300 to $3,000. Fellows may use the grants to cover travel to and from Washington, overnight accommodations, as well as other research expenses. To learn more, check out this post about the fellowship on our International Collections blog.
Besides researchers, sometimes we get special guests like ambassadors, parliamentary delegations, or groups from national libraries in Southeast Asia. We find such visits to be good opportunities to showcase special items in our collections and share what the Library has to offer. We also receive Congressional inquiries about Southeast Asia.
Are there any items of note in the collection?
Yes! The Library has rare collections such as the Mangyan Bamboo Collection from Mindoro, Philippines, nineteenth-century letters from Malay rulers to the British Resident of Singapore, Malay and Bugis manuscripts and early printed works acquired by the Wilkes Expedition (1838-42) such as the “Hikayat Abdullah” (1843), the first printed version of the “Sejarah Melayu (Malay Annals)” in Jawi script (1840), and episodes from the Bugis epic “La Galigo,” as well as Balinese, Lao and Khmer palm-leaf manuscripts, Thai and Burmese folding books, the first Tripitaka printed in Thai script donated by King Chulalongkorn of Thailand, early printed works by Christian missionaries including perhaps one of the earliest printed texts from Chiang Mai (from 1892), as well as World War II records from Burma and US Information Agency Cold War propaganda in various Southeast Asian languages. These are just some of the special items accessible at the Asian Reading Room. While the Asian Reading Room is the main access point for Southeast Asian material at the Library, there are some treasures and indeed non-rare Southeast Asian material in other reading rooms. For example, the first book published in the Philippines, the “Doctrina Christiana,” dated to 1593, can be found at the Rare Book and Special Collections Reading Room. There are also historic newspapers from Southeast Asia in European languages like Spanish, French, Dutch, and English that are accessible at the Newspaper and Current Periodical Reading Room, and maps of Southeast Asia at the Geography and Map Reading Room, including a rare 18th century Thai map. And the Moving Image Research Center has over 500 films donated by the Republic of Vietnam in 1975.
How can someone access the Southeast Asian Collection?
To use Southeast Asian materials, all you need to have is a valid Reader ID card. The card is free and it’s relatively straightforward to register for one. You just need to go to one of the registration stations at the Library, present a valid government-issued ID like a driver’s license or passport when registering, and depending on how many people are registering on a given day, you could be done with the process in 15 minutes. There’s a Library webpage that provides more details on this: https://loc.gov/rr/readerregistration.html.
Besides a Reader ID, we would suggest contacting reference staff at the Asian Reading Room or other reading rooms where material is kept if you plan to visit to read Southeast Asian works or conduct research. If you have a large number of books you’d like to request or want to work with rare material, having advance notice helps us prepare for your visit. Generally, the best way to reach reference staff is to write using our Ask-a-Librarian service: https://ask.loc.gov/.
What if I can’t come to the Library? Does the Library have Southeast Asian collections I can use remotely?
The Library does have digital collections that are freely available online, such as the William Farquhar Correspondence Collection and the Mangyan Bamboo Collection, as well as digitized items like a Thai manuscript on eye diseases. These items are searchable in loc.gov and a selection is listed in the Southeast Asian Collection research guide. We also have Southeast Asian web archives that contain websites that have been preserved. Some that stand out are the Southeast Asian election web archives, some of which the Library has been developing since 2009. A lot of the content from the web archives is available remotely.
Interlibrary loan through your local library is another way to access Library of Congress material. There’s a webpage that details conditions for interlibrary loans that you might check out: https://www.loc.gov/rr/loan/.
How does the Library acquire its Southeast Asian holdings?
People often wonder where our stuff comes from. The Library acquires Southeast Asian material through purchases and gifts. Of these, the most significant avenue for developing the Library’s Southeast Asian collection is through the Library’s Overseas Field Office in Jakarta, as well as its branch offices in Bangkok, Manila, Kuala Lumpur, and Yangon. The Jakarta Field Office, established in 1963, and its branch offices play a crucial role in acquiring books, newspapers, periodicals, maps, law gazettes, and zines from Southeast Asia. Local staff at the offices in the region visit universities, book fairs, government agencies, and bookshops to source a wide array of items for the Library as well as many research libraries in the United States. Our colleagues in the field office also catalog items that have been acquired so that these titles can be readily discovered by patrons through the Library’s online catalog. The work done by the overseas field office over the years has developed a world class Southeast Asian collection at the Library, and also contributed to Southeast Asian studies in the US.
Come discover the Library’s Southeast Asian collections for yourself at the Asian Reading Room or feel free to explore our digital collections! To get started, visit the Southeast Asian Collection page of this research guide: https://guides.loc.gov/asian-collections/southeast-asian.
Have further questions? Reach out to Southeast Asian reference librarians through Ask-a-Librarian: https://ask.loc.gov/asia.
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