Asian Division 2024 Junior Fellow Akhila Gunturu shares her experience inventorying serials on microfiche in the South Asian Collection. The post highlights the collection’s various uses through an analysis of the advertisements in the Telugu periodical Iṇḍiyā Tuḍē: Vārṣika Sāhitya Sañcika (India Today: Annual Literary Issue).
This post features answers to frequently asked questions about the Southeast Asian collections at the Library of Congress provided by the Library’s Southeast Asian reference librarians. Librarians touch on types of Southeast Asian materials available, who uses the collections, how the Library acquires its holdings, and how to access them.
(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 …
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.
With 900 freely accessible online items at launch, the South Asian Digital Collection features primary sources on a variety of subjects. This blog looks at the new collection’s items related to colonialism in South Asia, vernacular literature, religion and philosophy, grammar and linguistics, the Rebellion of 1857, and travel accounts by European and American authors.
(The following post is by Cameron Penwell, Japanese Reference Specialist, Asian Division.) On March 31, 1854, the signing of the US-Japan Treaty of Peace and Amity marked the beginning of official relations between the United States and Japan. In connection with the 170th anniversary of this historical event, the Library of Congress has launched a …
(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 …
(The following is a cross-post by Chelsea Liu, a processing intern in the Manuscript Division. It originally appeared on the blog Unfolding History.) From World War II veteran to chief of the Asian Division at the Library of Congress, Warren Michio Tsuneishi led the storied life of an American hero. Born to Japanese immigrants in …
In this blog post, 2023 Junior Fellow Amina Malik discusses her project to inventory the Asian Division’s serials in South Asian languages. The post also offers insight into this collection by looking at the Urdu publication “Ak̲h̲bār-i k̲h̲avātīn,” a serial for Pakistani women on education, society, international news, and many other topics.
