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Posted by: Ryan Wolfson-Ford
This blog post explores the posters included in the Minjuhwa Undong (South Korean Democratization Movement) collection housed in the Asian Division. It highlights how these posters, in conjunction with Minjung Art, vividly portray the key agents, objectives, and strategies of the democratization movement during the 1980s.
Posted in: Asian Division, East Asia
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.
Posted in: Asian Division, Southeast Asia
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 …
Posted in: Asian Division, South Asia
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.
Posted in: Asian Division, Southeast Asia
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 …
Posted in: Asian American History, Asian Division, East Asia, Holidays
Posted by: Ryan Wolfson-Ford
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.
Posted in: Asian Division, Junior Fellows, South Asia
Posted by: Ryan Wolfson-Ford
On Friday September 29, the Asian Division of the Library of Congress will be hosting a partial day display and talk in the Thomas Jefferson Building (rooms LJ110/119) celebrating the diversity of the Library’s collections through textiles, in collaboration with the African and Middle Eastern, Prints & Photographs, Geography & Maps, and Rare Books and Special Collections Reading Rooms.
Posted in: African and Middle Eastern Division (AMED), Asian Division, Events, Rare Books and Special Collections, South Asia, Southeast Asia
Posted by: Ryan Wolfson-Ford
The Library’s 4 Corners of the World blog recently reached 500 posts since its launch in April 2016. This post presents some highlights of the stories and topics covered by reference staff from the African and Middle Eastern Reading Room, Asian Reading Room, European Reading Room, and Hispanic Reading Room.
Posted in: African and Middle Eastern Division (AMED), Asian Division, Latin American, Caribbean and European Division
Posted by: Ryan Wolfson-Ford
The Southeast Asian Rare Book Collection, accessible at the Asian Reading Room, contains some unique items from the Cold War era; specifically, documents produced by the United States Information Agency (USIA) and disseminated in Laos, Thailand, Cambodia, Vietnam, Indonesia and Myanmar. This blog features the USIA Cold War-era Thai collection and a series of posters, “Communism or freedom?”
Posted in: Asian Division, Southeast Asia