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Archive: 2024 (4 Posts)

Archival boxes shelved in a library stacks.

Indian Independence League Files in the World War II Records from Burma Collection

Posted by: Ryan Wolfson-Ford

“World War II Records from Burma” is a diverse and unique grouping of documentary materials in the Southeast Asian Rare Book Collection. This post highlights documents from the collection concerning the Indian Independence League and Indian National Army, two Indian diaspora organizations that emerged prior to and during World War II.

A collage of covers of five different ephemera titles from various subcollections related to politics and government.

Now Online: Research Guides and Digitized Indexes for the South Asia Ephemera Collection on Microfiche

Posted by: Ryan Wolfson-Ford

(The following is a post by Charlotte Giles, South Asia reference librarian, Asian Division.) Valuable pieces of ephemera trace shifts in ideas, issues of importance, and the diversity of views in society at the time of their distribution. Because these materials are widely distributed to the public, they often create a meaningful and lasting snapshot …

From The Library of Suzanne Karpelès: Jewels of Early Cambodian Buddhist Printing and Modernist Khmer and Pali Manuscripts

Posted by: Ryan Wolfson-Ford

Suzanne Karpelès lived a fascinating life of a scholar of Pali, Khmer, Thai, Tibetan, and Sanskrit, at a time when being an Indologist was a male dominated field, making a major impact on academic knowledge of Cambodian Buddhism, among other subjects. Her personal library is full of wonderful treasures from the early days of Western printing of Cambodian Buddhist works and rare Khmer manuscripts like the Reamker, the Cambodian version of the epic Hindu tale, the Ramayana. One can still access her unique library at the Library of Congress where it has found a home with the Southeast Asian Rare Book Collection in the Asian Reading Room.

Celebrating Lunar New Year with the Library of Congress’s Collections

Posted by: Ryan Wolfson-Ford

(This post is a cross-post written by Dianne Choie, Educational Programs Specialist at the Library of Congress. It originally appeared on the blog Minerva’s Kaleidoscope.) You may have counted down to midnight on December 31st to ring in 2024, but did you know that in some parts of the world, February 10th marks the beginning …