Archives of Traditional Music at the National Library of Laos

By Gregory Green, Curator, Echols Collection, Cornell University

On the upstairs floor of the main building of the National Library of Laos a small room has been dedicated to the Archives of Traditional Music in Laos. The ATM, as it is called, contains around 2000 recordings on fifty cassette master tapes. Each tape runs for around two hours. Additional holdings include forty tapes of video recordings running from two to four hours each. A few examples of musical instruments are available, but generally these are privately owned and there for short term display only. The collection began officially building only in 1999 after receiving funding and technical support from several associations in Germany, however it holds recordings from most areas of the country and from many ethnic groups. Many recordings also predate the 1999 start date. Presently the Archives are privately funded, but remain freely open to the public for use between 8:30 a.m. and 4:00 p.m. Monday through Friday during regular library hours.

A flier available from the Archives describes its objectives in Lao with English translations:

1. To acquire a methodological knowledge base on internal systemization of traditional music in Laos.

2. To collect and display music data by classifying repertories, music instruments and ensemble arrangements.

3. To enhance the National Library’s scientific resources by establishing and supporting the department called “Archives of Traditional Music in Laos with its own systematization.

4. To motivate and train specialized local staff to continue the culturally vital task of documenting and preserving traditional music in laos.

5. To create a systematic musicological database on various media (sound tapes, video, photo, transcriptions) to be used for further research and for educational and public purposes.

6. To make accessible for public appreciation the rich and unique tradition of Laos.

The room is outfitted with recording equipment so that the collection continues to grow when musicians and singers make themselves available. An example of this occurred recently during the 2005 national khaen playing competition. A husband and wife team from Savannakhet province traveled to Vientiane for the competition. On their time off they were able to stop by the National Library, which sponsored the competition, and do some recordings of the husband playing the khaen while his wife sung traditional lam songs in the Savannakhet style. Occasionally there are also opportunities for staff to travel to remote locations for further recordings in the field.

Selections from the collection are available for sale for those interested in purchasing portions of it. For around two dollars each, a total of five CD’s, four with sound only and one with video, can be purchased. The entire collection could presumably be copied and purchased if necessary. Though the collection is stored on cassette masters, it is easily converted to digital versions using equipment available in the room.

Archives of Traditional Manuscripts at the National Library of Laos

By Gregory Green, Curator, Echols Collection, Cornell University

The National Library of Laos has been home to a successful preservation project and archive of traditional manuscripts for over a decade. With some local funding by the Lao Ministry of Foreign Affairs and major funding from 1992 to 2002 from the Federal Republic of Germany, the project set out to accomplish three major objectives as stated in a pamphlet available at the National Library.

1. To help the Lao PDR physically preserve its national literary heritage, which has been handed down through the centuries in the form of palm-leaf and paper manuscripts kept at monastic, public and private libraries through the use of traditional and modern techniques.

2. To revitalize public awareness about the value of traditional literature and provide the know-how to maintain and safeguard these manuscripts.

3. To guide and assist in the creation of scientific and technical tools such as databases, study material, textbooks, specialized computer software, etc, as well as developing academic and human resources needed for utilizing the manuscripts for teaching and research purposes in the field of traditional Lao language and literature at institutions of higher learning.

The project has accomplished these goals and more over the decade of its existence resulting in two related archives at the National Library. The first archive contains examples of traditional manuscripts brought in from around the country and stored in a small room on the second floor of the main building. The second archive is a large collection of over 500 rolls of microfilmed manuscripts from all over Laos stored in a small building behind the main library. As a part of the project, teams were sent out to survey holdings of traditional manuscripts around the country. The resulting catalog of manuscripts is a road map for future research. The two archives together contain a wealth of information ready to be mined.

Dr. Harold Hundius, who directed the project, is currently seeking funding to digitize the entire microfilm collection to increase accessibility for those not able to spend time in Laos with the collection. Recently, the team has redone some of the earlier filming to improve quality where necessary.

Print Culture and Academic Resources in Southern Thailand

Carlo Bonura, Luce Assistant Prof. of Islamic Societies in Southeast Asia in the Dept. of Politics and Government and the Asian Studies Program at the University of Puget Sound

This entry will provide a brief outline of print culture and academic resources in Thailand’s southern most provinces bordering Malaysia. While the resources discussed below would typically serve as a guide for scholars and research libraries seeking to expand their collections with materials from southern Thailand, the unfortunate severity of political violence currently found in the region significantly limits the possibilities for travel and academic projects. The ongoing violence, which began in January 2004, has drastically reshaped a gradually transforming public culture that since the mid-1990s enthusiastically supported a growth in regional newspapers, publishing houses and collectives, as well as the open distribution of local dissident texts. It can be assumed that many writers, academics and intellectuals involved in this burgeoning openness related to publishing have changed (or possibly reconsidered) their public roles since the start of 2004. Ahmad Somboon Abdulsamad provides an example of this shift in the roles of public intellectuals. In 2003 his collectively written history Patani Darussalam was published by the Center for Southern Thai Islamic Culture (an office of the Center for Southern Border Culture discussed below) provided the first locally written and nationally distributed critical history of the sultanate of Patani. In 2005 he became a member of the National Reconciliation Committee formed to explore possible resolutions to the region’s open conflict. This discussion of publishing and collections in southern Thailand, therefore, should be read with the current conflict in mind. Its effects will be long-lasting and threaten to undo much of the progress toward public openness critical to future local democratic development (a development it can be added that lies beyond institutional reforms or politics).

Contemporary print culture in southern Thailand includes the region’s numerous bookshops and locally printed newspapers (especially the regional Focus Paktai), a variety of religious and social institutions that produce various local histories or commentary on current issues, and academic centers that successfully support public intellectuals and their writings. Bookshops and small publishing houses serve as the foundation for this print culture. Locally owned Muslim and general bookshops with relatively large and diverse inventories can be found in every major city in southern Thailand. Hat Yai, the region’s economic center, also has several Chinese language bookshops and the city’s print market serves as the central daily distribution point for Malaysian Chinese and Malay language national newspapers. The availability of these non-Thai language newspapers as well as the unregulated inventories of Muslim bookshops presents a stark contrast to a time three decades earlier when the Thai government closely monitored publishing houses and prohibited the distribution particularly of materials written in Romanized Malay. Today, bookshops are able to carry a remarkably open assortment of locally written or relevant texts. One example of this openness was in 2003 the wide availability of Kuu Haeng…Paw Rongrian (Kuu Haeng … Burnt Down the Schools) written by the renowned human rights lawyer Somchai Neelaphaijit that documented the wrongful arrest and trial of Kuumanasae Kutuniirao, a Malay-Muslim from Naratiwat, accused of organizing simultaneous school burnings across four southern provinces in 1993. Shortly after the start of the current violence Somchai was abducted in March 2004 as a result of his activist work toward ending martial law in the region and remains missing. The popularity of his book, critical of the state and commenting on separatist politics, certainly marks a time of open debate about recent political events that may take a long time to restore.

The importance of Muslim bookstores and publishing houses to the strength of regional Islamic education (particularly in the distribution of Kitab Jawi, religious commentaries written by past Patani ulama) has been discussed in detail in Hasan Madmarn’s The Pondok & Madrasah. Even the smallest of the five provincial capitals, Satun city, has two substantial Muslim bookshops. Such shops carry three kinds of texts that include general texts on Islam or Muslim Politics, specifically religious texts (such the Quran or collections of Hadith), and Jawi script texts for primary level education (Jawi is an Arabicized Malay script). Although pamphlets or books in the last category are typically designed in the way that they are written to be part of a school curriculum, these books are mostly meant to supplement a student’s pondok or madrasah (two styles of Islamic education found in southern Thailand) training in Jawi writing. For books found in Muslim bookshops Jawi is the primary language for religious texts especially related to Islamic education, but Thai, in fact, is predominant for texts related to politics or what might be called the sociology of religion. Many of the general texts on various aspects of Islam sold locally are in fact published in Bangkok through nationally distributed presses such as the Islamic Academy. A significant percentage of these works are translations from other languages into Thai and potentially could be sold nationally to a broader audience. These bookshops are also distribution points for Thailand’s numerous national Muslim magazines (none of which are published in southern Thailand).

In addition to bookstores, a number of social organizations and academic centers support public scholarship, journals, and the collection of local written materials in small archives. The Pusat Kebudayaan Sempadan Selatan/Suun Watanataam Chaidaen Pak Tai (Center for Southern Border Culture) is a public collective based out of the Provincial Islamic Committee of Yala. It publishes the Thai language journal Suara Budaya/Saan Watanataam focused on Southern Thai and Muslim-Malay culture. This eclectic mix of cultural themes has become a somewhat popular means of arranging public cultural production so as to “provincialize” Thai culture and demonstrate its equality with Malay-Muslim culture. The journal Taksin Khodii (Southern Thai Studies) published regularly by the Institute for Southern Thai Studies (Sataaban Taksin Khodii Suksaa) also utilizes this hybrid cultural strategy for its content. The Institute for Southern Thai Studies is located on Ko Yo, an inland island just west of Songkla city, and its campus includes a museum, presentation hall, and the Center for Southern Thai Social and Cultural Documents (Suun Ekasan Sangkhom lae Watanataam Paktai). The center has a relatively large library that includes copies of all documents within the national archive related southern Thailand, a small collection of newspaper articles related to regional politics, and a collection of local classical poetry.

By far the most important institution for regional scholarship on social and political matters is the Pattani Campus of Prince of Songkla University. The University’s various colleges continuously produce public documents designed to comment on issues found in the surrounding community. Many intellectuals from Pattani involved in the National Reconciliation Commission at one time taught at PSU Pattani. The University’s published scholarship is collected in its relatively large John F. Kennedy Library, which includes a considerable Islamic Studies collection. Two smaller unrelated libraries can also be found at the new Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand-Growth Triangle Center and the College of Islamic Studies. PSU Pattani has just entered into a new relationship with Silkworm Books to publish English language scholarship on southern Thailand.

It is also possible to identify a far more dispersed and highly localized print culture related to Islamic schools (pondok), weekend lectures aimed at improving religious education (as a form of dakwah, or the propagation of Islam among believers), and the weekly meetings of Jumaat Tabligh at their two markaz in Satun and Yala. At each of these sites it is possible to find photocopied handwritten texts or tape recorded lectures. “Underground” magazines, such as the magazine of the Darul Arqam, a dakwah group banned in Malaysia, can also readily be found at the markets that form on the edges of the larger meetings. In the case of pondok Islamic schools, many of which were founded in the 19th century or earlier, it is common for schools to have tape recordings of lectures given by their “toh kru”/ “toh guru” or to have lectures or writings packaged for public consumption. An example of this is the cassette tapes entitled “The Kingdom of Langkasuka,” two tapes with approximately two hours of a lecture given on the topic of Patani’s history dating back to this early kingdom. Such texts and tapes would be difficult to obtain without visiting the sites and meetings as they are not typically distributed in Muslim bookshops.

Publishing houses that print materials on southern Thailand and archives found in Malaysia should also be noted. A large amount of materials collected from southern Thailand can be found within Malaysia’s national archives, including copies of the British Colonial Office records relating to negotiations over the status of the Malay communities in the region after World War Two. The Archives also have a Malay language translation of Sejarah Negri Setol (The History of Setol) by Che Abdullah Long Puteh, a text that can be found in Satun’s new provincial museum, but has not yet been translated into English. The publishing house Pustaka Darussalam in Alor Setar, Malaysia has published works in Malay by Malay-Muslim scholars from southern Thailand such as Ahmad Fathy al-Fatani and Ahmad Omar Chapakia. Penerbit UKM, Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia’s main press have long printed both Malay and English language texts on southern Thailand including recent works written by scholars from within the region, such as Hasan Madmarn’s The Pondok and Madrasah in Patani. Finally, The Khazanah Fathaniyah in Kuala Lumpur, which appears to be the private project of Haji Wan Mohamad Shaghir Abdullah, has become increasingly popular in its efforts to translaterate the works of 19th century Patani ulama (viewed by some as crucial figures in the history of Malay culture) into Romanized Malay. In this last instance, it is possible to see the transnational effects of a regional print culture as the reception of these Jawi texts in Kuala Lumpur have a far different contemporary reception than in the areas in which these texts were first written.

An Anthropologist Reflects on his Research Career in Thailand: Research on the Transformation of Thailand, Vietnam, and Mainland Southeast Asia, 1962-present

Charles F. Keyes, University of Washington, Department of Anthropology

In 1947 Lauriston Sharp, professor of anthropology at Cornell University, initiated a research project that was carried out in the village of Bang Chan in Minburi district near Bangkok, Thailand. The Bang Chan Project, the first intensive study of a rural community in Thailand, was designed to trace the transformation of rural society in a Third World society that was being oriented economically and politically to global conditions. Although the Bang Chan project ended in the 1970s when Bang Chan was absorbed into the suburbs of Bangkok, it provided a model for subsequent studies of the transformation of rural society in Thailand. These studies have included those of the political economist Chatthip Nartsupha, economists such as Kamol Janlekha, anthropologists such as Lucien and Jane Hanks, Michael Moerman and many students of Sharp.

As one of Sharp’s students, I myself began in 1962 a project that was aimed at describing and analyzing the transformation of a rural community in northeastern Thailand. I have added to the research materials first collected in the village of Ban Nông Tün, Mahasarakham Province, northeastern Thailand in subsequent visits and studies carried out over forty years. In 2005 Jane, my wife, Suriya Smutkupt, and Bussarawan Teerawichitchainan and I finished a third restudy of this village. In 1967 I again followed Sharp’s lead, and that of his colleagues, Jane and Lucien Hanks, in undertaking research in northern Thailand, in my case in Mae Sariang District, Mae Hong Song Province. I subsequently carried out research again in northern Thailand in 1972-74 and 1990-91 and have made short research trips to the region since then.

In the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s I was also able to expand my research experiences through trips to Burma, Cambodia, Laos, and Sri Lanka. In the late 1980s and early 1990s I was also able to make brief field trips to southern China. In 1988 I made my first trip to Vietnam and in the ensuing decade and a half have made many trips there and carried out a research project in 1996 among the Black Tai of Tuan Giao district, Lai Chau province.

I have recorded observations from these trips in field notebooks and have supplemented these with photographs, tape recordings, documents linked to events that took place during my fieldwork, and other documents (official reports, newspaper articles, and other materials) related to the research. On several field trips I have also carried out formal surveys and the forms used for these surveys are also part of the collection. Finally, my wife, Jane, and I have also written many letters to family members and friends reflecting on our experiences.

In the late1960s and early 1970s I made collections for the Burke Museum at the University of Washington and the American Museum of Natural History in New York of material culture produced and/or used in the village in northeastern Thailand where I carried out my original field work. These collections have been documented at the two museums. I have also undertaken archival research in both the National Archives in Thailand and the India Office in London related to my studies in northeastern and northern Thailand and have made copies of documents from these sources. Additional materials include a large collection of newspaper clippings from Thailand (and, more recently, downloaded articles from newspapers in Thailand).

Again following the lead of Lauriston Sharp who deposited materials relating to the Bang Chan project at the Cornell University Library, I have begun to donate my research materials to the University of Washington Libraries. The research collections of UW Libraries also include a substantial body of research material generated from projects carried out in northern Thailand by Lucien and Jane Hanks and donated by Jane Hanks.

My own collection includes field notebooks, which are especially extensive for my long research projects, approximately 15,000 slides, black and white, and color photos, tape recordings (which were particularly significant for projects in the late 1960s and 1970s and early 1980s), surveys carried out in rural northeastern Thailand (early 1960s, early 1980s, and early years of the 21^st century, and in northern Thailand (late 1960s), documentation for collections made in northeastern Thailand for the American Museum of Natural History and Burke Memorial Washington State Museum in the late 1960s and early 1970s, many letters written to friends and relatives “from the field”, documents collected during fieldwork, photocopies of manuscripts (mainly from northern Thailand) and documents copied from archives in Bangkok and London.

It is imperative, I believe, for anthropologists and others who carry out fieldwork to ensure that their research collections become available for future generations of scholars, including those of the countries in which we have done research. For those of us who began our fieldwork before the beginning of the computer age (about mid-1980s in my case) and even for many materials collected after the advent of computer, the materials we have collected need to be digitized to make them available to a broad scholarly audience. I intend that copies of digitized materials I have collected will be deposited in Thailand, including the Maha Chakri Princess Sirindhorn Center which is making a concerted effort to build up a collection of archived research materials on Thailand.

Margaret Mead once wrote that she never began a new field project until she had completely written up the materials from a previous project. She was wrong, primarily because fieldwork is always carried out at a particular historical moment. The interpretation of materials collected at one particular time assume new significance when viewed from another time. Moreover, no fieldworker ever can make use of all the materials they collect during the projects they carry out. They owe a legacy to history and to future researchers, including historians, to ensure that the materials they have collected are available for these future scholars and they owe a particular obligation to those whose lives and times they have documented that their stories not be lost.

First International Colloquium, The Library of Congress Cooperative Acquisitions Program for Southeast Asia (CAPSEA): Rethinking Southeast Asia Collection Development: Trends & Innovations. April 4, 2006, University of California, Berkeley

William Tuchrello, Library of Congress Representative for SEA, Jakarta

Over forty librarians and academics participated in this colloquium that was organized by Virginia Jing-yi Shih of the University of California at Berkeley and Co-chaired by William P. Tuchrello. The primary audience was Southeast Asia information specialists from various institutions in the USA and abroad who are participants in the Cooperative Acquisitions Program (CAPSEA). The colloquium’s strategic CAPSEA initiatives were to promote and enhance quality acquisitions and cataloging to meet participants’ needs; identify the priorities for and implement them cost-effectively and time-efficiently; facilitate collaboration and participation to enhance new value-added initiatives; and to peer into the digital world as it pertains to a future role for CAPSEA.

The colloquium commenced with Professor Thomas C. Leonard, Kenneth University Librarian, University of California, Berkeley setting the tone of linking the past accomplishments of CAPSEA in providing high research level information to the scholarly world in an organized fashion to the new imperatives to move into the digital world without losing the personalized touch. In his keynote address "The Future of Scholarly Research Trends of Southeast Asian Studies" Dr. Jeffrey Hadler of U.C. Berkeley reinforced this concept; he noted the need to make unique local source materials available promptly and more widely through e-access technology. Both Ms. Ch’ng Kim See, Head of the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies Library in Singapore and Dr. Hwa-Wei Lee of LC’s Asian Division reminded the audience through a summary of the program how CAPSEA remains a value to international institutions because the region still lacks any other effective means to make research materials available in a structured consistent fashion. Amelia McKenzie, Director of the Asian Collections at the National Library of Australia noted that libraries have to shift to be in line with current research trends and the changing nature of ‘Asian studies.’ She also noted that because users have a choice of information and formats, they want especially to use more non-traditional sources, such as ‘grey’ literature materials; this increases the difficulty of sourcing and acquiring. To meet so many new and often competing objectives, Dr. Dr. Roger Tol, the Director of the Representative Office of the KITLV/Royal Netherlands Institute of Southeast Asian and Caribbean Studies, suggested expanding cooperation, such as information sharing between the various programs in terms of microfilming, copy cataloguing, digitizing materials and acquisitions. Dorothy Rachmat, the Catalog Management Coordinator at Yale University expounded on the importance of the participants assisting in setting cataloging priorities, having quality control of automated records and sharing records to create a more cost effective product for the participant programs in a digital world. Wishing to avoid the problems of past conferences, which have often lacked follow-up, Virginia Jing-yi Shih created a virtual system for virtual input; to date this consists of 50 action items. The papers, comments, and action items are being added weekly to a website that will be accessible to the participants who can see how and the CAPSEA program staff are doing to meet these challenges.

The Future of Scholarly Research Trends of Southeast Asian Studies

Jeffrey Hadler, Department of South/Southeast Asian Studies, University of California, Berkeley

Abstract

I will speak as an historian who makes use of local source materials. I represent the subset of Southeast Asianists who are most in need of active and innovative library stewardship. I will identify particular challenges of maintaining Southeast Asia collections: a need for storage space, aggressive in-country collecting, and an investment in librarians and cataloguers who can handle the principal languages of Southeast Asia. I will discuss the need for faculty and students to return to the culture of shared collecting responsibility that was essential to the development of the great Southeast Asianist libraries. And I will address the possibilities and limits of the internet and digital solutions in Southeast Asian Studies.

I would certainly be preaching to the choir if I made the obvious list of needs the thrust of this talk: the need for more cataloguers, for more stack space, for recognition that the linguistic diversity of Southeast Asia makes it impossible for a single scholar or librarian to cover the entire region comprehensively. Instead I would like to give a bit of the background of Southeast Asian studies and to offer up some suggestions as to directions collecting might take in the near future.

First of all, I should give you a bit of my own disciplinary background. I am an historian and Indonesianist, but in my heart and now on my résumé I am a committed interdisciplinary area studies person. I teach here at U.C. Berkeley in the Department of South and Southeast Asian Studies. This department was once a languages and literatures department and the faculty remain unified in our commitment to working with texts and to reading literary texts from Asia. We are some of your neediest clients and we hunger for old and obscure material. So I am now surrounded by South Asianists as I was, in graduate school, surrounded by East Asianists. I am forever struck by the confidence (a generous term) of these disciplines. Sinologists and Indianists speak easily of Chinese and Indian culture where we Southeast Asianists see particularity and distinct local cultures. In part their confidence stems from the geographical contiguity of the regions they study, and in part it comes from authoritarian, centralizing and monarchical state traditions that combined with orientalist scholarship to create histories of unity and similarity. Indonesianists especially see islands, and provincial culture and customary law, and have a very hard time working macroscopically on national cultures. Southeast Asianists are faced with local historical traditions that are invested in differentiating region from neighboring region. We have our Southeast Asianists manifestos, O. W. Wolters, Anthony Reid, and most of us are committed to the appropriateness of “Southeast Asia” and to the legitimacy of thinking comparatively within Southeast Asia. Yet we are nervous about our discipline.

This is a strength of Southeast Asian Studies. In the first lecture of every survey course we must address the question of the reality of “Southeast Asia.” We have state-of-the-field reports with titles like “Southeast Asian Studies in the Balance,” and until it was updated in 2005 the standard history survey was “In Search of Southeast Asia.” We have to justify whatever it is that links Burma, Thailand, Laos, Cambodia, Vietnam, Malaysia, Brunei, Singapore, Indonesia, East Timor, Philippines, and excludes Bangladesh, India, Sri Lanka, and China. We must try to teach about a area where research is carried out not only in national and local languages (Indonesia alone has 726), but in colonial archives requiring Portuguese, Spanish, French, and Dutch, as well as English.

So it is frightening to stand up in front of a crowd and try to claim that I am a “Southeast Asianist” when in fact I’m maybe just an Indonesianist and probably with confidence only a West Sumatranists. It is not surprising that, since J. S. Furnivall, very few scholars have managed substantial comparative scholarship. But we have to teach across the region, and so I find myself thinking comparatively, and regionally, talking with blustery authority about Burma and the Philippines and Thailand. But I can always reassure myself that nobody expects me to be doing real research on Vietnam or Burma, and that my colleagues understand that I am an Indonesianist and don’t try to stump me with clever questions about Laos. I suspect that it’s much scarier to claim to be a “Southeast Asia Librarian” since you are supposed to be actively collecting and cataloguing across the region, with tangible results.

“Southeast Asia” as a geographical unit only emerges during World War 2 as the British South-East Asia Command. Before that you can find something called Southern Studies in Japan, and various nineteenth and early twentieth century anthropological constructs, but still the field is very new. After the war in the United States there was a boom in Southeast Asian Studies with federal money helping to establish programs at Cornell, Yale, Berkeley and a few other schools. Expert Southeast Asianists were needed to explain strangeness of 1950s Southeast Asians and their ideologies to the American government. In Indonesia Sukarno was talking about NASAKOM and the Third World, hosting a threatening Asia-Afrika conference in Bandung, and ultimately (and incessantly) telling the US to “go to hell with your aid.” In Cambodia Sihanouk and in Burma U Nu were equally if less spectacularly invested in the creation of ideology.

The wars in Vietnam further energized Southeast Asian Studies, adding urgency to mystery, and Southeast Asianists took part in both the romance of the antipodes and the excitement of a political front. The first postcolonial Southeast Asian leaders were young, hungry, and in the 1950s and ‘60s they had nothing to eat but their ideals. There was more to devour by the 1970s. A second generation of leaders—Soeharto, Marcos, later Mahathir—were militaristic and eager for capital and “development.” Shielded by the cold war and fat with oil crisis money they established regimes and states that were seemingly rational, certainly open to American investment, fronted by ministers trained at American universities, and capable to speaking to the world in a language (English) and in rhetoric that needed no interpretation. It was apparent that Modernization Theory, an idea that came out of MIT and American academies in the 1950s and claimed, basically, that given enough money and education people would choose American capitalism and democracy, had been a total success. Cultural translators, the scholars being produced by the Area Studies Centers, were obsolete. Southeast Asians were no longer strange, involuted, primordial and ill-behaved. Rational Choice, USIS, and the Ford Foundation had triumphed over radical local politics; Cambodia was a grim reminder of the danger of these alternatives. In Indonesia the so-called Berkeley Mafia of technocrats celebrated growth, development, self-sufficiency, and poverty alleviation. By the 1980s Area Studies was increasingly viewed as antiquated. In the early 1990s Ruth McVey gave the Golay Lecture at Cornell and with other graduate students in the audience I listened to her toll the bells for the death of Southeast Asian Studies. Funding dried up. The Social Science Research Council shifted its grant focus away from general Southeast Asian Studies, where any topic might conceivably be funded, and demanded that graduate students pitch projects that followed the whims and agendas of the SSRC faculty advisory board. So we now have a generation of PhDs forced to do dissertation research on subjects relating to “Diaspora” and “Criminalities,” the SSRC pet topics of the mid to late 1990s.

But then in 1997 the Asian Financial Crisis saved us all. The Baht crashed and other Southeast Asian currencies followed. Banks tried to call in loans and quickly realized that the stunning growth of the previous decades was insubstantial. The Long Term Credit Bank of Japan collapsed. “Development” proved to be little more than a cover for corruption, and Southeast Asia became strange and unpredictable once again. In May 1998 Soeharto, the “Father of Development,” was forced from office. Long submerged millenarian movements and political alternatives resurfaced. And experts were again needed. The US “War on Terror” in 2001 brought the total rehabilitation of Southeast Asian Studies. Now there were Salafis everywhere, planting bombs in Bali, muttering and making videos in Singapore, establishing shariah law in Kelantan, fighting the central state in Aceh and Thailand, kidnapping people in Mindanao, and establishing Southeast Asia as the War on Terror’s “Second Front.”

All of this has been good for Southeast Asian Studies. The government recognizes that the region is still poorly understood and there has been increased funding for language study, for graduate research, and (I hope) for building library collections. Even better there is an acknowledgment that attention must be paid to the sorts of weird and marginal sources that libraries were forced to ignore in the lean years. Since Modernization had evidently proved incapable of wiping out the weird we must become attuned to the odd pamphlets, local periodicals and photocopied screeds where political alternatives hide.

What then is the “future of scholarly research trends” in Southeast Asian Studies? Well, it’s not the internet. There has been a proliferation of studies about internet Islam done by scholars with no real field experience or linguistic expertise. There are books about crucibles of terror in Southeast Asia that pander to the expectations of policy wonks. No doubt they have an audience but as you all can image these studies are at best hollow and often wrong. Right now I can download a page from a 19C colonial journal article on West Sumatra that I found on Google books, clean up the resolution in Photoshop, upload it into Acrobat for OCR, and then run it back through Babelfish for a Dutch-English translation. I get gibberish. But there will be a point in the near future when rudimentary machine translation of these difficult sources will be possible. However at no point will these translations have any historical or cultural nuance. And while it’s likely that the modern versions of the national languages will be offered, there will never be a call for old Malay, or 16C Dutch, much less Nom or Sundanese or Kachin. The centers with their broad area studies commitments are still necessary for training scholars. The internet will never offer universal access to all texts for any English-language-only researcher interested in adding Southeast Asia to a grand comparative thesis. The internet does offer some tremendous advantages. Now anyone can access free PDF versions of the articles in Leiden’s BKI or Cornell’s Indonesia. And in some cases internet has revolutionized our ability to do high-level research—Ian Proudfoot’s Malay Concordance Project at the ANU has changed the way scholars study classical Malay literature.

Furthermore people in Southeast Asia understand that the internet offers almost as much opportunity for totalitarian policing as it does for democratization. Politically active folks might avoid the internet as an easily surveilled space. In Yogyakarta and Bandung the ‘zines, teen novels, and comix are all being produced as samizdat texts, never available on the internet, and not available in big bookstores or through national distribution. For example the artist Eko Nugroho has been producing a political photocopied comic called “Daging Tumbuh”; Eko has won major international art awards and has toured Europe and yet no library is collecting his books. Are they serials, comics, ephemera (they always include loose stickers and posters), music (they often have a CD attached)? We need to find a way to collect these ephemeral and difficult to classify publications. It’s easy to head to the big bookstores and buy up the glossy books, all subsidized by the Ford Foundation, that are now coming out of the main publishing houses. But most exciting are these fugitive texts, and in libraries they will be the seeds of future research.

This future research agenda will continue to be set by the centers for Southeast Asian Studies—Universities with Area Studies centers and interdisciplinary faculties willing to define themselves as areal specialists now and then. Southeast Asian Studies will continue to grow around the key fields of anthropology, history, and political science. The future will still see serious textual study and historical work that moves away from the late colonial period and back to the Early Modern, the years of first European interaction, and to the precolonial period, addressing questions of religious conversion and intercultural influence. Scholars of the modern period are increasingly interested in regional and global connections along thematic lines: Hajj networks, Chinese communities, capital flows. These scholars will require additional language training if their work is to be meaningful, and this means that Southeast Asian Studies will need to cooperate with librarians and centers focusing on East Asia and the Middle East in order to build collections that transcend conventional regional definition.

Meanwhile scholars and librarians need to identify important manuscript collections in Southeast Asia, many of them provincial and disintegrating, and work to conserve and digitize them. The Fragile Palm Leaves Foundation, ICAI, individual conservation work on the archives of the courts of Java have all made important contributions to the salvaging of specific archives. These efforts have all emerged from the individual research interests of particular scholars. In my own research I have made use of an archive of pulp fiction housed in the libraries at Berkeley, the KITLV, and a bit at Michigan. The books are all of interesting and still obscure provenance—all are portions of the same dismantled Indonesian lending library, the “Taman Batjaan 'Asjik.” This library was based in Borneo, probably Banjarmasin, and the books have inspection stamps from the Japanese occupation government. Most of the books seem to be penny dreadfuls printed in Sumatra in the 1930s and early 1940s and so Minangkabau and Mandailing authors are well represented. Just one recovered lending library yields so much, and most of these books advertise other publications that are now unknown. How many more of these libraries are moldering out there? I know that in almost every market in Indonesia there are lending library kiosks, and these might contain unique treasures. I suspect that an entire library could be purchased for the cost of a Brill monograph.

There is this problem, then, for Southeast Asian collecting. It’s a huge field and we have limited collecting resources in the form of people on the ground. In Indonesia today there is increasing regional publishing, perhaps inspired by decentralization and “regional autonomy.” I can identify new books from Padang but these books are not available in Jakarta and they are not yet available on RLIN. There is a push for local literatures in local non-national languages; the Rancage prize supports this literature, but it is not easily collected and not easily catalogued. Still it must be preserved. So collect everything. Buy everything. It’s cheap enough. Ignore the overpriced stuff coming out of Routledge and Brill if need be but get the books from Southeast Asia. Digitize them to save space. These books are acidic and will disintegrate anyway. Cut the spine, scan the text, and put them in the recycling bin. Make the books available as electronic texts or as volumes of miniaturized facsimiles on acid free paper.

I recall with great fondness my time spent in the Echols Collection at Cornell (when it was still named for a faculty bibliophile and not a rich alumnus). The books, many of them, had the names of their collectors and donors written inside. There were Echols, Kahin, Anderson, Benda. As a graduate student I haunted the used book markets of Jakarta and Yogya, and if I found anything unique I donated the original or a copy to the library. I do the same now at Berkeley. It gives me real pleasure to imagine graduate students noticing my name in the books, alongside those of my teachers.

It is the faculty, and especially the graduate students, whose interests will define the collections and shape the future scholarship. If a researcher comes across a collection of manuscripts in a village leaders house then that researcher must be aware of all conservation and duplication possibilities and the resources of the library. Uli Kozok at Hawaii found a 14th century bark manuscript in a village in Kerinci and created a facsimile. It is by 100 years the oldest known Malay manuscript. Mina Hattori, a Japanese researcher, had access to the women’s-access-only library at the Diniyyah Puteri School in Padang Panjang and made copies of their unique collection. These stories are not exceptional. Graduate students should be given a little seed money, maybe $100, and a promise of greater reimbursement for the collection of ephemera and local publications while in the field. It is essential that the faculty and the students see the building of a collection as a shared and communitarian responsibility.

The scholarly directions are at best what they have always been: well trained scholars using local languages to undertake studies that are culturally and historically informed. The new problems of storage can be addressed partially through digitization. The lack of human resources in collecting can be addressed by working with faculty to rehabilitate a culture of collecting among scholars in the field. The lack of human resources in cataloguing—witness the mountainous back-catalogue here at Berkeley, and one overworked librarian dealing with materials in at least 20 major languages… Well, we can only hope that the state wises up before that mountain buries us all.

You are my heroes and on behalf of the faculty I thank you all for making our jobs possible and thrilling.

The Singapore and Southeast Asia Collections in the National Library of Singapore

Bonny Tan, Reference Librarian, Singapore and Southeast Asian Collections

In November 2005, Singapore launched its new National Library building - an award-winning 16-storey modern structure. It is home to the Lee Kong Chian Reference Library and the Central Lending Library. The jewel of the Lee Kong Chian Reference Library is its Singapore and Southeast Asian works.

Evolution of a library

The Singapore and Southeast Asian Collections are a result of almost two centuries of collection building. Since the Library was founded in 1823 as part of an educational institution, its leaders had sought to collect the literary gems of Malaya and its surrounding region. This included works from the early missionary printing presses of Malaya in Penang, Malacca and Singapore. Many of these titles were in Jawi, the vernacular of the Malays or in Peranakan, the unique creole of the Straits Chinese who spoke their own form of Malay. In 1874, the proprietary library was formally acquired by the government and named the Raffles Library and Museum. With Singapore serving as the administrative centre for the Straits Settlements, the Library gained an invaluable collection of government resources such as the administrative reports, legislation and statistical highlights of the Straits Settlements.

The collection of books supported the research interests of naturalists and curators working for the Museum. In fact, the early Straits Branch of the Asiatic Society had its beginnings within this institution and by 1923, its small yet scholarly collection of books was transferred to the Library’s holdings. Thus the collection continued to be enriched by resources on the ethnography, culture and natural history of the region. However, the interests of the Library were not confined solely to the scholarly community. In that same year, the Library had set up the Junior Library, the first children’s library in Malaya.

When the Japanese invaded Malaya in 1942, the Library’s resources were threatened by looting and destruction. Through a unique collaboration between the existing British curators and Japanese scientists, the collections were preserved during the Japanese Occupation. Thus, much of the resources on British Malaya were preserved in the Raffles Library where many other collections were destroyed.

By the time the war ended, a strong sense of nationalism had grown amongst Southeast Asians. This influenced how locals saw their institutions. In 1953, local philanthropist Lee Kong Chian, offered a donation of $375,000 for the establishment of a free, public library with a requirement that books in the local languages be collected. Until then, the Library had levied subscription fees and its collections were mainly in English. Thus when Singapore’s National Library building was completed in 1960, it served as both the legal depository of all local publications in various local languages as well as a public library for the young nation.

In 1964, the South East Asia Collection was established. It held two key donor collections – the Ya Yin Kwan collection which focused on the Nanyang Chinese and the Gibson-Hill collection which had unique titles on local anthropology and natural history. It also brought together the titles on Malaya collected since the 19^th century.

In 1995, after a review of the Library’s potential and future goals, the Library became a statutory board. As the National Library Board (NLB), the Library had greater financial and administrative autonomy. With an injection of funds stretched across 8 years, the NLB pushed an extensive programme of building new and upgrading existing public libraries, with an under girding of networked information. Doing away with traditional methods, the Library garnered accolades from institutions such as the Harvard Business Review, for its creativity in management. The decade long exercise in expanding its public library functions culminated in the completion of the new National Library building in 2005 and the establishment of a virtual library.

Many of the titles collected through the centuries on Southeast Asia have been brought together in the Lee Kong Chian Reference Library. Users, whether local or foreign, are allowed to peruse these titles displayed on open shelf or accessible as surrogates on microfilm and online, without charge or registration. Equipped with modern technology such as wireless access, the collections on Southeast Asia now offer the scholar new opportunities for research.

Collection Highlights

The Singapore and Southeast Asian Collections number more than 240,000 items, reflecting resources published in Singapore and collected through legal deposit and extending to Southeast Asian countries, namely Malaysia, Brunei, Indonesia, Philippines, Thailand, Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar and East Timor.

The collection’s subject strengths are in history, government, language and literature, and sociology. Besides printed titles, it also has a good microfilm holding of rare titles and newspapers, a newly established ephemera collection, maps, posters and pictures. To make these resources accessible, a digital library – the Singapore Pages, displays digitized versions of these items.

Some highlights of the collection include the following:

Rare Materials Collection

The Rare Materials Collection houses resources collected in the 19^th century. Some of its more valuable works include the Malay manuscripts and the Baba translations of Chinese fables. The holdings of Malay manuscripts, though not extensive, include some rare titles. The first edition of the Hikayat Abdullah (Abdullah’s autobiography) (1849) is considered one of its treasures. It is valued for its ground-breaking literary style as well as a revolutionary printing technique first applied in Singapore. Some of the collection’s manuscripts will be displayed between November 2006 and May 2007 at the Exhibition of Malay Manuscripts along with rare records from the region.

The Straits Chinese who had assimilated with the local culture had also developed their own language which combined Malay and Hokkien, known as Baba Malay. They began publishing works which were translations of Chinese legends into their localised language, reflecting a uniquely Malayan culture. The stories, familiarly known as Chrita Dahulu kala (Stories of Long Ago) were published between 1890s to 1930s. Although the original publications were widely distributed and read, they are today rarely found except in private collections or academic libraries. The Library’s collection thus serves as an accessible repository of the unique language of the Straits Chinese, or Chinese Peranakans. The Library has a relatively large collection of these translated tales.

The rare titles are housed in the Rare Materials Collections Room and are made accessible through microfilm as well as through an extensive digitisation exercise. The books from the period of the Raffles Library have also been shelved together, reflecting the thinking and interests of that period.

Special Format Collection

A total of 24,000 microfilmed items offer access to the heart of the Lee Kong Chian’s unique holdings – its newspapers and rare titles. The local newspapers capture the socio-cultural evolution of Malaya and Singapore as seen in the published language, its advertorials and news reports. The Library has collected and microfilmed newspapers in the various local languages dating to the early 19^th century. This includes the first edition of the Straits Times, dated 15 July 1845. Other Malayan newspapers of the Straits Settlement period are also microfilmed as well as early papers from Penang and Malacca.

A small map collection spanning Singapore from the 1920s to the 1960s give perspective to its changing built environment. From the 1970s to the 1980s, the Library also served as a depository for the country’s posters – many reflecting the national campaigns for which Singapore has great fame. Ephemera collected since the 1970s including brochures, postcards, bulletins and newsletters of local organisations have recently been made accessible for use.

As the National Library, the Library also sees to the listing of all locally published materials and annually publishes them in the Singapore National Bibliography (SNB). The print format is available from 1967 to 1992. From 1993 onwards, the listing is available in CD-ROM format and is published semi-annually. Besides, the Singapore National Bibliography, the Library also undertakes the indexing of articles from locally published journals and magazines. The data is searcheable in the Singapore Periodicals Index capturing information from 522 English periodicals, 87 Chinese magazines and 30 Malay.

Digital Collection

Since 2004, rare titles have been carefully digitized and made accessible through the portal Singapore Pages. To date 100 titles can be read online without charge. Added to this are two unique resources namely NORA – NLB’s Online Repository of Artistic Works and the Singapore Infopedia. NORA consists of manuscript works of local writers in the various languages while Singapore Infopedia contains articles prepared by Librarians and researchers on Singapore’s history and cultural landscape, each with short references for further readings. Some of the articles include pictures from the growing collection of Singapore Pictures. These are digital images of the local built landscape and its cultural symbols.

Asian Children’s Collection

The first children’s library in Malaya was opened in 1923. The books for boys and girls were mainly Western-oriented. However, early publications collected since this period formed the basis of a reference collection that first took shape in the 1960s. The Asian Children’s Collection was begun by librarians who used it as a research tool for story-telling. Beginning with only 200 titles, the collection today amounts to 20,000 items. The books are in various languages including English, Mandarin, Malay and Tamil. Colourful tales from East Asia to West Asia, from Asia and by Asians, are brought together in this collection for the purpose of further research.

Donor Collection

The 10^th floor of the National Library building is dedicated to donors’ collections. The Ya Yin Kwan collection, consisting of some 10,000 items was the first donation to the library made by an individual. Tan Yeok Seong, who made the donation in 1964, was a local entrepreneur who had acquired a rich resource on overseas Chinese in Southeast Asia. Many of the titles are rare items, with texts in English, Chinese and Japanese. The Gibson-Hill collection is named after its collector, Carl Alexander Gibson-Hill. He had served in the Raffles Museum as a curator and later director. As a trained ornithologist, his collection focused on the natural history of the region but also include resources on its peoples, cultures and history.

With the launch of the new Library building, the added space offered new opportunity to receive donors’ collections. Tan Swee Hian, a renowned multi-disciplinary artist, was one of the first to offer his unique collections for a long-term loan. Besides his collection of books, personal diaries and letters, they include rare gems from China that reflect Tan’s scholarly interests and his Buddhist faith. One is a Ming dynasty silk piece used by scholars with its finely written script brushed with rat’s whiskers. Another ancient artefact is a Bodhisattva figurine from the Song dynasty. A recent long-term loan of interest is the collection of Koh Seow Chuan, an architect of some standing. Consisting of some 2,500 documents, it includes private documents, legal papers of land ownership and transfers, maps of Singapore and the region and photographs of early Singapore. These items are accessible through their surrogates or through requests at the counter. Visitors can view some of the maps and papers and see the titles displayed in glass cabinets on the 10^th floor.

Contact :

Noryati A Samad

Senior Manager, Singapore and Southeast Asia Collections

Lee Kong Chian Reference Library

10-01 National Library

100 Victoria Street

Singapore

Email : noryati@nlb.gov.sg

Tel : 065 63323671

Fax : 065 6332 3395

News from CORMOSEA

CORMOSEA Web Site

Gregory Green, formerly at Northern Illinois University, now the new Curator of the Echols Collection at Cornell, has been steadily working on improving the CORMOSEA web site (http://www.cormosea.org/). He reported at the CORMOSEA annual meeting at the Association for Asian Studies in April 2006 that the site received 68,000 hits in the last year, mostly directed to the CORMOSEA Bulletin and the Directory of Southeast Asian Studies Librarians that was created by Virginia Shih, Southeast Asian Studies Librarian at UC Berkeley.

Training

CORMOSEA librarians continue to discuss encouraging new professionals to enter the field. The recent changes in personnel at many of the U.S. Southeast Asia collections has highlighted the paucity of young talent entering the field; there are not sufficient trained librarians to fill bibliographer positions, and an even more critical lack of vernacular language cataloging skills. While the field remains undecided about how to train librarians locally, three initiatives were funded that will increase skill levels within the region: Pat Oyler, Prof of Library Science at Simmons College announced that she had received a grant of $ I.8 million from the Atlantic Philanthropies to continue her training of Vietnamese librarians. This program had been funded in the past by the Harvard Yenching Institute and the Henry Luce Foundation. There was discussion of how CORMOSEA libraries might collaborate with this program, perhaps by providing internships.

The Department of Education TICFIA grant for the SEA Digital Library awarded to Northern Illinois University on behalf of CORMOSEA will include a component to be managed by Susan Go at the University of Michigan that will help train librarians in the Philippines in the management of digital libraries; the University of Washington recently received a grant from the Henry Luce Foundation to strengthen training in archeology, one part of which will include working with government archeological offices in island Southeast Asia to train in digitization and documentation techniques. However, it is clear that needs within the region are still great; Philippe Peycam, Director of the Center for Khmer Studies in Seam Reap reiterated his request for assistance in training a librarian for that institution.

Collections

There was ongoing discussion of the LC fiche program for Southeast Asia, which has now become so expensive that many institution have dropped their subscriptions. At the 2006 meeting it was decided that it looked as if Cornell was still receiving the full set of these preservation fiche copies, and that they would lend to other institutions. It was therefore not necessary to initiate any consortial purchase at this time.

There has been renewed interest amongst SEA librarians to enhance collection of Chinese language materials from the region. As noted in the Field Trip reports below, LC has increased its efforts in this area of under-represented material. Michigan, Harvard, Ohio and UC Berkeley have been leading this initiative.

There was discussion at the 2006 meeting of Asian Development Bank materials and their deposit system. LC offices have been informed that they are increasingly available in electron version on the web now.

Bibliography of Asian Studies

Allen Riedy, despite his new position as Head of Asian Collections at the University of Hawaii, remains the CORMOSEA representative to the Bibliography of Asian Studies. He reported that BAS has made no progress towards Unicode compliance in the last year, but is working on some of its searching functionality. In terms of the numbers of indexing entries, Southeast Asia is quite well represented: East Asia - 16,900; Southeast Asia - 7,500; South Asia - 4,200. BAS is aware that the lack of full text access to journal articles is a problem; the editors recognize the need to make the data structure open URL compliant, so that services such as Serials Solutions can provide full-text linking.

SEA Digital Library

Greg Green announced that the TICFIA grant for the SEA Digital Library would stay at NIU, although he would be moving to Cornell. His departure made it even more imperative that the project establish a strong Advisory Board. A meeting was held at the 2006 AAS meeting to discuss the functions, membership and authority of this Board.

Member News

UC Riverside was welcomed as a CORMOSEA member in 2005, where Kuei Chiu represented the library.

Southeast Asia Microform Project News

The 2005 annual meeting of SEAM was held at the Center for Research Libraries (CRL) in Chicago. Center Director, Bernard Reilly, spoke to the group on the changing priorities and responsibilities of libraries for preservation and dissemination. He noted that the microfilm technology of the 1940s when the Center for Research Libraries was established, is excellent for preservation, but as a medium of dissemination, digitization is going to be the preferred medium within the next 5 years, since digitized information can be easily transmitted to researchers without the possible loss of the print or microfilmed originals. Microfilm can continue to as a form for preservation, but dissemination of information from the resources of CRL will come via the digital format. With delivery of the digitized form, there will be no reason why collections will be restricted to use by North American members of the organization. The provision of digitized formats will be demand-based

New projects discussed include: an Indonesian newspaper project at Columbia, which was approved for a small SEAM subvention. Possible Han Nom Preservation Projects were discussed by Virginia Shih, from the University of California, Berkeley, who also recommended filming or digitizing the Maurice Durand Collection held by Yale University Library’s Manuscripts and Archives Department. Virginia Shih also suggested working with the National Library of Vietnam to evaluate their Han Nom collections for preservation and digitization. She proposed visiting their library and making a visual evaluation for SEAM.

Jim Armstrong from the Library of Congress Field Office in Jakarta talked about the duplication of effort between the Indonesian titles filmed in Jakarta by the KITLV office and LC, and the need for better coordination.. He reported that the Field Office is currently using 1 film camera, a few fiche cameras. Production was up 22% with 7004 fiche (1000 titles) being created. The Field Office had also increased film production by 200 reels (or a 7.5% increase).

Susan Go was re-elected as Chair of SEAM in 2005. Tom Hudak, Department of Anthropology, Arizona State University was elected as the faculty representative to SEAM.

The minutes of this meeting are available at the SEAM site: http://www.crl.edu/areastudies/SEAM/news/seam05.htm

At the 2006 SEAM meeting CRL reported again on its digitization efforts: James Simon noted that CRL is pursuing the digitization of foreign newspapers and are approaching commercial groups to see if they have any interest in the project. The plan is to use Optical Character Recognition (OCR) when feasible. The initial efforts will most likely start with Latin American resources, and questions were raised about SEAM’s role in promoting the inclusion of Southeast Asia resources. Will Tuchrello said that he would be willing to contact publishers in Indonesia to see if they were interested in contributing content. There were concerns expressed about rights and possible commercial distribution of materials paid for by CRL project funds.

Fe Susan Go had noted at the 2005 SEAM meeting that the ICPSR election data center in the Philippines had worked with SEAM to encode some of the Lande Philippine Election collection, and would like to encode all of the Lande material. Several political scientists including two faculty members at Michigan would like to do further encoding of Southeast Asian election results, including Thai election material, and have it housed at CRL. At the 2006 meeting Susan Go continued to report on this project: This collection of Philippine election returns was microfilmed by Ateneo de Manila Photoduplication services. After the microfilming Ateneo sent the papers back to the Institute of Public Democracy (IPD) to have the papers converted into an electronic format that would enable quantitative research. The Institute of Social Research (ISR) will archive the data, and SEAM member institutions will have accessed to them. ISR has raw data on election returns from several other Southeast Asian countries, and questions were raised about funding a more ambitious project to encode election data from the region.

The Center for Khmer Studies provided a proposal for SEAM’s consideration asking for funding to support the digitalization of 300 rare items from the collections of the National Library of Cambodia in Phnom Penh from the colonial to pre-Khmer Rouge eras, included are monographs, maps, and periodicals. It was decided that further details were required.

Will Tuchrello reported that LC preservation efforts previously conducted in New Delhi are now being carried out in Jakarta. Will reported that he is examining Intellectual property and copyright issues for each SEA country. Indonesia has changed its law related to copyright and it is now more restrictive for educational institutions. LC’s filming of Berita Negara (Indonesian Gazette) was switched from microfilm to microfiche format.

Mel Thatcher, Genealogical Society of Utah, reported that the GS is working hard to go digital. They are renegotiating old contracts to enable digitization of documents. GS is trying to get the rights from the Bishop to gain access to church records in the Philippines. GS has obtained the rights to the Spanish National Archives. Mel reported that birth, death and Marriage records are currently being scanned in Manila. There are still some questions regarding when these records can be made available to the public. GS is approaching the Indonesian Council of Churches in an attempt to get cemetery records. Mel reported that advances in scanning technology now allow an image to be scanned for 1/3 the previous cost.

Virginia Shih’s summary of the Ha Nom Project will be posted on the SEAM web site:http://www.crl.edu/areastudies/SEAM/index.htm. Roger Tol reported that KITLV has filmed an archive of records of the Oranje Nassau Gesticht orphanage of Jakarta that had been stored in Lieden; they cover the years 1880-1942. Sino-Malay literature titles from Indonesia have also been filmed.

UC Riverside was welcomed as a new member of SEAM, and Hao Phan of UCLA was elected as a new member of the SEAM Executive Committee.

SEAM Newspapers News

Reports from the 2006 meeting included the news that SEAM has filmed September 1999 through December 2005 of Radar Bogor, and that a proposal was made by Hawaii for funds to film Suara Maluku. Columbia University reported that 9 Indonsesian newspapers from the late 1960s to 1970 were at the filmer: Ampera Review [1968]; Bulletin Sulut [1969]; The Deli Times [1965]; Dwiwarna [1969-70]; Eastern Sun [1970]; The Sun [1970]; Harapan Minggu [1965]; Sabah Weekend [1971] and Tegas [1969-70].

Susan Go reported that she is still negotiating with the Lopez Museum over the Tribune (Manila) [1925-1930], with the hope of getting a copy for SEAM.

The SEAM Executive Committee made a decision to purchase the following Arabic language newspapers from Singapore: ARAB JOURNAL (Singapore), 2 October 1931-26 January 1933; 31 August 1933-1 Jan 1935, AL- GISAS (Singapore) , 13 February 1932-24 July 1933, AL- HISAB (Singapore), Jan-1935; 24 April, 12 May, 4 June 1936; AL- MAGD AL- ARABI (Singapore), 20 March – 13 Sep 1935; SAWT HADRAMAWT (Singapore), 16-25 April 1935; 5 Aug-Oct. 1940; 18 June-1 Sept 1941 ; BARHUT, 1929-1931, nos. 1-3,16,17-35; LEMBAGA BAROE, 1928/29, nos. 1-8,12-13 ; AL- ISLAAH, 1930/31 nos. 1, 10-15 ; PERWATA ARAB, 1933/34, nos. 5,7,11,13-17,28-30,32,34-39,42-45,48-51; AL- MOERSJID, 1937, nos. 1-4 ; AL- AKHBAR (Singapore), 13 Sep 1939-26 Aug. 1941.

The CRL Newsletter Focus Highlights Southeast Asian Resources

The Center for Research Libraries’ newsletter Focus dedicated its December 2005 issue to the Center’s Southeast Asian holdings. The issue includes a statement by President Bernard F. Reilly, “Ensuring Access to Southeast Asia Resources,” and a history of the Southeast Asia Microform Project by James Simon, “Southeast Asia Microform Project:35 Years of International Collaboration.” Also included are articles on recent SEAM filming projects: “Preserving Khmer Rouge Archives,” by Richard Richie of Yale University Library, “SEAM Preservation Microfilming Project in Viet Nam,” by Judith Henchy of the University of Washington, and an article on CORMOSEA’s major new digital initiative, funded by the U.S. Department of Education, “A Digital Southeast Asia Library,” by Gregory Green, Northern Illinois University. This issue, which also includes an updated holdings list for the SEAM project, can be viewed online at: http://www.crl.edu/focus/TOC.asp?id=1

The Thai National Collection at CRL is Evaluated

The Thai National Collection was initiated by Carol Mitchell, formerly SEA Librarian at UW Madison, at a time when the LC office in Bangkok was unable to continue a participants program for Thai materials. Four Department of Education Title VI-funded libraries with SEA collections contributed $1,500 per year from their Title VI library resources budget to support a program at CRL that would acquire a second copy of important, hard to acquire materials, particularly government publications, and non-commercial serials. After some years of fitful operation, James Simon, Director of International Resources at the Center, approached Larry Ashmun, a specialist on Thailand, to evaluate the collection. The report was the focus of a meeting at the 2006 Association for Asian Studies meeting, at which the contributing institutions agreed that the program, while certainly flawed, had provided increased access to valuable materials, some of them unique to US libraries, and that it should be continued and given stronger focus. William P. Tuchrello, recently returning as Southeast Asia Representative to the Library of Congress office in Jakarta, agreed to work with LC staff in Bangkok in order to refine collection profiles and increase staff awareness of the importance of the program. As James Simon noted in his summary of the 2006 meeting: “Library of Congress is committed to sustain a program in cooperation with CRL – the convergence of benefits in collecting rarely-held material that is made accessible via the Center is a model that should be encouraged. Materials considered “out of scope” for LC collections should still be considered for acquisition by the TNC.”

The 2006 meeting also agreed on the following general criteria: regional/provincial publications -- materials published outside the relatively accessible Bangkok metropolitan area --- should be emphasized; non-English material is still desirable, but important materials in Western languages should not be ignored. Statistical publications are important; not just general statistical works but also subject-specific works (e.g., forestry statistics). Tuchrello noted that these types of publications were not as frequently published in Thailand as in the past. Project implementation/evaluation publications, such as provincial development proposals that are produced regularly to discuss development plans for the individual regions, would be appropriate for collection. Non-governmental publications: these were encouraged across all subject ranges, and should include Burmese NGO material, given the occurrence of refugees and migrants in the region. Will Tuchrello volunteered to investigate whether these materials could be obtained. Government Documents: the group agreed that regional or provincial materials are important. Tuchrello described monthly official publications issued in newspaper format that might be obtained. Other materials, such as investment reports and business development material, might also be candidates for acquisition. Political party documentation, including election material, if not widely distributed, should be included. University series are important, but often difficult to acquire. LC was encouraged to explore acquiring publications from not widely available sources (e.g., rachapat publications). It would seem that working papers from institutions are generally more widely available on the Internet than in print.

Other subject scope questions raised included increasing interest in scientific and agricultural material. As these are no longer being collected by the National Agricultural Library, it is even more important to ensure this material is available. Library of Congress collects certain materials (e.g., social aspects of engineering), but not the pure sciences. Financial/bank publications; these materials are of current scholarly value due to the Asian financial crisis, but these are perhaps the responsibility of business school libraries and may not be in scope for the TNC.

Excerpts from James Simon’s Executive Summary of Larry Ashmun’s report are included below.

Thai National Collection Assessment: Executive Summary

In 2005, the Center for Research Libraries asked Larry Ashmun (Southeast Asia Bibliographer, University of Wisconsin) to perform an assessment of the "Thai National Collection" (TNC).

As readers may recall, the Southeast Asia Program Task Force (1996-1998) at CRL was charged with examining means and methods for an improved and rationalized program for acquiring and accessing Southeast Asian materials for the North American scholarly community. One of the outcomes of the task force was a recommendation and plan for a cooperative program for the acquisition of lesser-held Thai material, to be maintained by CRL. Four Title VI National Resource Centers provided funding to start the program. Since 1998, CRL has been acquiring unique material from Thailand provided by the Library of Congress-Jakarta field office as part of this effort.

This program seeks to provide U.S. scholars of Thailand with a unique collection of Thai language (and other non-English language) resources not readily available at local institutions. The materials being collected are primarily non-commercial items acquired by the Library of Congress-Jakarta field office. This collection is not intended to be a substitute for basic commercially available resources from Thailand. Resources that were acquired through the Cooperative Acquisitions Program for Southeast Asia (CAPSEA) program were not to be included, nor were material regularly microfiched by the LC field offices.

Summary of Findings: General

Ashmun confirms the scholarly value of the Thai National Collection. He states:

Overall, CRL’s Thai National Collection is a beneficial one, complementing the more extensive Thai studies collections of the Library of Congress and the CAPSEA libraries. To the extent that the TNC can, and indeed should, better function in this capacity is the task at hand for CRL and those involved with this national cum international endeavor.

Some common issues became apparent in the review of both monographs and serials:

Language resources were largely in Thai and English. As the collection guidelines proposed to collect in languages other than English, greater effort might be made. Absent from representation were publications in any of the minority "hilltribe" languages spoken in Thailand.
Geographic distribution of publications was heavily weighted towards publications from Bangkok and the greater Bangkok area. As one of the original goals was to make an effort to collect materials outside of Bangkok, this would appear to be a deficiency.
Some cataloging inconsistencies, particularly with Thai Romanization and word division, should be corrected and standardized to aid searchability.

Recommendations:

The reviewer suggests that the collection could be considered a "working template," while a more established development, or growth, plan should be implemented if the collection is to more fully realize its expectant potential.

Ashmun suggests a few case examples which demonstrate how the existing collection could be enhanced to develop particular strengths in the TNC beyond being an eclectic mix. These include:

Provincial summary reports (Banyai sarup Changwat ____): The TNC currently holds publications of this nature from only six out of Thailand's 76 provinces. Similarly, the collection lists just 13 “provincial investment plans” (Phaen kanlongthun Changwat _____) from the provinces.
Similarly, with serials, annual reports by provincial chambers of commerce (Raingan pracham pi . . . Hokankha Changwat _____) and annual provincial marketing reports (Khomun kantalat Changwat _____ pracham pi . . .) are represented inconsistently among provinces, as well as sporadically (no reports in these categories had been received since 2000.

A clear “breadth” of coverage approach in these cases, and as applicable in general, would be more beneficial for the collection if it chose to focus on such publications. Alternately, these could be distributed among collecting libraries and balanced with that received by the Center.

Ashmun also provides a number of possible directions that the collection could take to enhance its standing as a strong but complementary collection. A focus on particular topics or types of material not commonly collected (such as commemorative publications, conference proceedings, legal documentation) could provide a clear scope of collecting that is both easily understood by scholars and utilized by libraries as a tool to modify their own collection strategies.

Ashmun's overall conclusions of the program suggest that that the basic framework and priorities of CRL’s TNC should be reworked in order for the TNC to more fully function as it was originally intended. Inherent within this process is the need for clearer implementation of selection consistency:

In summary, TNC’s [best role would] seem to be as a complementary collection to LC-CAPSEA’s more in depth consortial coverage of Thailand/Thai studies. The task is thus to decide what mix of subject and geographic coverage, as well as governmental and non-governmental publications, would be best for CRL’s Thai [collection]. A clearly focused and concomitantly acknowledged Thai National Collection at CRL would benefit not only itself but simultaneously significantly enhance the level of Thai studies in the U.S.

CORMOSEA Technical Processing

CORMOSEA discussions continued at meetings regarding the question of cataloging personnel, and the possibilities and successes of outsourcing.

The 2006 meeting reaffirmed the need to continue linkages to ALA’s Asian African and Middle Eastern Section (AAMES) meetings. The CORMOSEA Chair made a presentation to the 2006 Southeast Asia Council (SEAC) meeting requesting funding to send the CORMOSEA Technical Processing Subcommittee Chair to the ALA annual meeting. The request was greeted with enthusiasm by the SEAC membership, and the funding request approved unanimously.

There was continuing discussion at the 2005 meeting about problems with Romanization tables, and hope expressed that the work being carried out by Doug Cooper’s SeaLang Library, which received TICFIA funding in the last round, could assist by providing automatic correction for some of these problems. Doug Cooper also demonstrated how the SeaLang Library could enable Unicode implementation at the 2006 meeting. He was able to critique the OCLC Thai vernacular script indexing protocols, and hopes to work with them to enhance their script functionalities.

At the 2005 meeting Virginia Shih raised the question of the inadequacies of the LC Subject Heading, particularly the Asia, Southeastern. The news below shows the success of her work.

Technical Reports

News of Library of Congress Subject Heading Additions

Virginia Shih, UC Berkeley, reported that her efforts to get Nôm imprints recognized in the LCSH have been successful: The new subject headings for "Nom imprints" and "Nom script" have been approved and included in the Library
of Congress Subject Headings Weekly List, 30 as follows:

150 Nom imprints [May Subd Geog] [sp2005004380]

150      Nom script [May Subd Geog] [sp2005004378]
450      UF Chu Nam
450      UF Chu Nom
551      BT Vietnam--Languages--Writing

Other LCSH Additions and Changes include the important change from Asia, Southeastern to Southeast Asia. For full listing of the revisions see: http://www.loc.gov/catdir/cpso/wls05/awls0531.html

Weekly List 13, (March 29, 2006) announced another long-awaited change, from Vietnamese Conflict to Vietnam War:

150    Vietnamese Conflict, 1961-1975   CANCEL

150    Vietnam War, 1961-1975   [May Subd Geog]   [sp 85143277 ]

053       DS557-DS559.9

450    UF Vietnam Conflict, 1961-1975

450    UF Vietnamese Conflict, 1961-1975   [EARLIER FORM OF HEADING]

450    UF Vietnamese War, 1961-1975

551    BT United States--History--1961-1969

551    BT United States--History--1969-

551    BT Vietnam--History--1945-1975

The Weekly List for May 11^th 2005 reports the demise of the term “Orientalists:”

150    Southeast Asianists   [May Subd Geog]   [sp2002000227]

550    BT Asianists

550 BT Orientalists CANCEL

Unicode Implementation

Since OCLC announced its intention to implement Unicode for Thai, Arabic and South Asian scripts, there was much discussion on the Southeast Asia librarians’ discussion lists. Ms. Hisako Kotaka, who had been in charge of OCLC CJK cataloging services and is now covering multiple non-Latin script support services, spoke at the CORMOSEA Technical Services meeting at the Association for Asian Studies meeting in San Francisco in early April 2006. Discussion amongst the CORMOSEA librarians revolved around the implementation questions associated with their own local OPACs, and particularly their capabilities to index Thai script. It seems that OCLC is also struggling with this indexing question.

The Library of Congress Cataloging Policy and Support Office continues to plan for the use of Unicode characters in catalog records. A policy position document outlines the current use of non-Latin characters in bibliographic records, the technical capabilities now that LC has migrated to the Unicode release of our Integrated Library System (Voyager), and the opportunities in the future for the expanded use of Unicode in bibliographic and authority records. This document will be revised as the situation warrants.

The Library of Congress Implementation Policy may be found at: http://www.loc.gov/catdir/cpso/unicode.pdf.

News from U.S. Southeast Asia Collections

Northern Illinois University Libraries Receives TICFIA Grant on Behalf of CORMOSEA for Major Digital Library Initiative, The Southeast Asia Digital Library

Northern Illinois University Libraries, along with a consortium of U.S. institutions represented by CORMOSEA and several international partners have recently won a grant from the US Department of Education to create the Southeast Asia Digital Library, a multi-institutional, collaborative project to create and display digital materials in Southeast Asian Studies. The Digital Library will also enhance existing digital collections as it collaborates with them to guide people to quality online resources on Southeast Asia. The mission of the Southeast Asia Digital Library is twofold. First, it will complete eight projects specified within the grant proposal for the Technological Innovation and Cooperation for Foreign Information Access (TICFIA) program of the United States Department of Education. These projects will create new material for the Digital Library and in some cases, enhance existing material for more convenient use and access. Second, during and beyond the four year grant, the Digital Library will become a central World Wide Web portal for digital collections in Southeast Asian Studies. The intent of the website is to significantly enhance online research options on the region by linking with existing resources and collaborating with as many other projects as possible.

A full description of projects funded under the initiative can be found at in Gregory Green’s article in the CRL December 2005 issue of Focus: http://www.crl.edu/focus/05FallDSAL.asp?issID=1. The project will soon have its website available. Information about access to the site will be posted on the CORMOSEA site: Cormosea.org.

SEALang Library Receives TICFIA Funding for Online Dictionary Tools Project

I am very pleased to announce that the SEAlang Library is on-line at http://purl.org/sealang . Over the next four years, SEAlang will make dictionary and corpus data and tools available for Thai, Burmese, Lao, Khmer, Mon, Shan, and Karen (all complex-script alphabets) and Vietnamese. Primary funding for SEAlang comes from the US Department of Education TICFIA program (UW-Madison Prof. Robert Bickner, PI). CRCL Inc. provides matching funds and is responsible for implementation.

SEAlang Library lexical resources will help enable a wide variety of projects. The SEAcat project (http://seacat.sealang.net ) may be of special interest to CORMOSEA members. SEAcat's Thai tools allow both phonetic and vernacular queries, and help unify vernacular, ALA/LC, and other cataloging systems (and, thanks to OCLC's generous contribution of LCCN/OCLC equivalences, can also use Open WorldCat to find books that have LCCNs, but not ISBNs). SEAcat can help generate ALA/LC transcription from vernacular orthography, and survey past cataloging practice in cases of ambiguous word segmentation.

Doug Cooper, Center for Research in Computational Linguistics, Bangkok

University of Wisconsin-Madison Collects and Digitizes Archival Materials from Thailand and Laos

In May 2006, Larry Ashmun, Southeast Asian Studies Bibliographer, visited the Zoo Tswv Zov Yaj ("Good Shephard") Catholic, Hmong mission in Lomsak, Thailand in conjunction with the University's ongoing work on
the collection of Father Yves Bertrais, OMI (Oblates of Mary Immaculate) one of three missionary founders of the Hmong Romanized Popular Alphabet (RPA). Wisconsin is digitizing the material which will be housed in its
Department of Special Collections. Father Bertrais retired at the end of December 2005 after a lifetime of service, almost exclusively with the Hmong in, first, Laos and elsewhere after 1975, since 1948.

Larry Ashmun, University of Wisconsin-Madison

The University of Washington Libraries Honors Prof. Emeritus Daniel S. Lev

The University of Washington Libraries held a dedication event to celebrate the contributions of Prof. Emeritus Daniel S. Lev to the University and the Libraries. A rare nineteenth century volume on life and costume in the Dutch Indies was purchased in Prof. Lev’s name, in recognition of the collections on Indonesian law and politics that he has contributed to the Libraries over the years. To mark the donation of his faculty papers and research notes to the Libraries, the volume by Hardouin and Ritter, Java: Tooneelen uit het Leven, Karakterschetsen en Kleederdragten van Java's Bewoners, was purchased for the Special Collections division of the Libraries. This first edition, dating from 1855 includes a folding colored map and 26 hand-colored plates. The Dean of University Libraries, Betsy Wilson, the Head of the Southeast Asia Section, Judith Henchy, and four of Prof. Lev’s colleagues across disciplines spoke at the event. Prof Lev’s research notes and a collection of rare historical statistics from the 1950s will be digitized by the Libraries and made available to legal research institutions in Indonesia. Prof. Lev is also donating a large collection of papers, serials and Indonesian monographs to the Pusat Studi Hukum dan Kebijakan Indonesia (PSHK) in Jakarta.

Judith Henchy, University of Washington Libraries

Ohio University Acquires Private Collection of Dr. David Wyatt

Ohio University recently acquired the private library collection of Dr. David Wyatt, the former John Stambaugh Professor of History at Cornell University. The collection, consisting of roughly 15,000 volumes, about half of which are in Thai, includes most of the standard works on Thailand and Southeast Asia in general, a substantial number of the Thai royal chronicles, the greater part of King Chulalongkorn’s (1868-1910) diaries and letters, and an extensive array of monographs, memoirs, novels, and cremation volumes. The Ohio University Southeast Asia Collection staff is now in the process of cataloging the Wyatt materials. The SEA staff is also preparing a database of the Wyatt materials. The database, which will be accessible from the Southeast Asia Collection homepage, will include a complete index of the Wyatt materials, including Thai-language works (using both Thai and romanized script) to enhance access to the collection. For more information, please contact Jeffrey Shane, Southeast Asian Librarian, Ohio University at 740-593-2657 or shane@ohio.edu.

Cornell University Library’s Echols Collection Has New Curator

Gregory Green started his new position as Curator of the John M. Echols Collection on Southeast Asia on June 5^th 2006. Greg comes to Cornell from Northern Illinois University Libraries where he was Curator of the Donn V. Hart Southeast Asia Collection. He has also worked at Arizona State University Libraries as the Southeast Asia Bibliographer while attending the University of Arizona's School of Information Resources and Library Science. He has an MLS (2003), an MA in Asian Studies from the University of California at Berkeley (1999) and a BA in History and Asian Studies from Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah (1995).

Greg can be reached by phone number at 607-255-8889 or email ghg4@cornell.edu.

Northern Illinois University Libraries Announce New Curator for Southeast Asia

Northern Illinois University Libraries is delighted to announce that Hao Phan has accepted the position of SEA Collection curator at Northern Illinois University. Hao will be with us in mid September. We are looking forward to working with him.

Hao Phan has been working as Librarian for Southeast Asian Studies at UCLA since 2003. He received both his MLIS (2000) and his BA in American Literature (1998) from UCLA. Prior to coming to the U.S. from Vietnam in 1991, he also graduated from the Teachers' College in Hochiminh city with a BA in Vietnamese literature. Hao Phan has published three poetry books. His most recent book is a bilingual collection of poems: "Night, Fish, and Charlie Parker," Tupelo Press, 2006.

Ete Olson, Northern Illinois University Libraries

Center for Research Libraries Welcomes a New Coordinator and Project Assistant for the Global Resources Network Project

CRL welcomes Judith Eckoff as the new GRN Project Coordinator for CRL. Judy has recently received her Master's Degree in Library and Information Science from Dominican University. She also has a Master’s Certificate in Project Management (George Washington University) and a Master of Arts in History (Western Michigan University). Judy has extensive international experience in for-profit, non-profit, educational, and government arenas resulting in a global perspective. Before attending library school, she worked for more than seven years at ESI International, a company that provides training in the areas of project management and business analysis to many Fortune 500 companies. During her course of study at Dominican, Judy was a practicum student at McDonald’s Corporation and a serials assistant at Northwestern University Library.

Judy assumes the responsibilities capably handled by Elizabeth Darocha Berenz. In this position, she will be the point contact for the multiple AMP and GRN projects. She will manage all aspects of the projects' ongoing activities, including attending meetings, coordinating project proposals and processing, communicating with the membership, and facilitating information sharing with a broader scholarly audience. Judy’s e-mail is eckoff@crl.edu.

I am also pleased to welcome James Hill as the new Global Resources Network Project Assistant. James comes to us from DePaul University, where he is currently pursuing his Master of Science in human-computer interaction. He has also received his MLIS from University of Illinois. Most recently, he was employed as a reference librarian and Webmaster for McDaniel College Library in Westminster, Maryland. James was responsible for the ILS and all of the library's technology. He is also proficient in Web coding and elements of design.

James will work with the GRN on a part-time basis while pursuing his degree. He will work closely with Judy and myself on the efficient and coordinated operation of the AMPs and GRN projects. His contact is jhill@crl.edu.

James Simon, Director of International Resources, Center for Research Libraries

News from Europe

The Restructuring of Southeast Asian Studies in France

The newsletter Lettre de L’AFRASE (no 64, Dec 2004) reported on the restructuring of the various research and teaching organizations contributing to Southeast Asian Studies in France. Stemming from reports beginning in 2001, and discussions resulting from decisions made by the research organization CNRS (Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique), the IRSEA (Institut de Recherche sur le Sud-Est Asiatique) and the LASEMA (Laboratoire Asie du Sud-Est et Monde Autronésien) announced plans for greater collaborations.

This collaboration is mirrored by the proposed concentrations in Paris and Marseille of the major research and teaching organizations with interests in Southeast Asia: LASEMA, IRSEA, CERI (Centre d'études et de recherches internationals), EFEO, EHESS (L'École des hautes études en sciences socials), EPHE (École pratique des hautes etudes), INALCO (Institut National des Langues et Civilisations Orientales), IRD (Institut de recherche pour le développement), Monde Insulindien, Université de Paris 1, Paris X, Université de Provence, as well as AFRASE. This consolidation is also seen in the context of the concentration of library collections in the BULAC (Bibliotheque Universitaire des Langues et Civilisations) at a new building in the ZAC (zone d’aménagement concerté) Tolbiac, near the site of the Bibliotheque Nationale de France. This new building, which will open in 2008, will bring together major Asian collections, including the collections of EFEO and INALCO, and the India and China collections of EHESS, and will put a high priority of the development of a multi-script catalog. After the move of the EFEO Library to the Tolbiac site, the reorganization envisages a concentration of the Paris axis in a Féderation de Recherche at the Maison de l’Asie, the current site of the EFEO Library on Avenue Président Wilson. Other restructuring concerns the alignment of Monde Insulindien with l’IRSEA and LASEMA and other Southeast Asian research partners concentrated under the umbrella of CNRS and EHESS in Marseille.

The Collection of the Centre de Documentation et d’Information sur le Laos (CDIL) is Donated to EFEO Library

The Centre de Documentation et d’Information sur le Laos (CDIL), formerly at Metz (Director, Geoffroi Crunelle), has been donated to the Ecole Français d’Extrême Orient library in Paris. The collection, consisting of some 1,500 items, includes monographs, serials, journal articles, audio cassettes and videos. For further information, contact: Christoph Caudron. EFEO Library (maisondelasie@efeo.fr).

Southeast Asia Library Group Meeting in Berlin, 29-30 September, 2006

The 2006 Annual Meeting of the Southeast Asia Library Group will take place in Berlin, Germany, 29-30 September 2006, in co-operation with the Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin. The SEALG Annual Meeting is open to Southeast Asia librarians who are interested in the work of SEALG or who wish to join the SEALG. Visitors from related areas are welcome, too.

The programme opens on 29/9/2006 at noon, and includes a visit to the Museum of Indian Art in Berlin Dahlem at 13.00 (http://www.smb.spk-berlin.de/smb/sammlungen/details.php?objectId=11 . Events on the 30^th, include a guided tour through Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin (http://www.staatsbibliothek-berlin.de), followed by the Annual Meeting of SEALG. The agenda includes: News from the participating institutions, Prospects of co-operation with CORMOSEA (Jana Igunma); Projects: "List of SEA Libraries" (Rahadi Karni), "Union Catalogue of Oriental Manuscripts in Germany" (Hartmut-Ortwin Feistel), and discussion of the state of area studies in UK higher education (Nicholas Martland). For more information about SEALG, please visit our homepage at www.sealg.org and the SEALG Newslist at http://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/lists/SEALG.html.

Jana Igunma, Curator of Thai, Lao and Cambodian Collections, APAC

The British Library, www.bl.uk

Other Conferences

23^rd ASEASUK Conference

The 23^rd Conference of the Association of Southeast Asian Studies of the UK will be held at St. Anthony’s College, University of Oxford, 15-17 Sept. 2006.

See the ASEASUK website: http://mercury.soas.ac.uk/aseasuk

11^th European Association for Southeast Asian Archaeologiest (EuroASEAA)

Bougon, France 25-30 September 2006.

Email: manguin@efeo.fr

Chinese Diaspora in Vietnam

Université de Province, 20-21 October 2006.

Email: Jean.Baffie@up.univ-mrs.fr

Euroseas

University of Naples

12-15 September 2007

Email: pietro@ruk.dk

Demise of the European Newsletter of South-East Asian Studies

Volume 17, no 1 (Nov. 2004) issue of the Newsletter announced that its publisher, KITLV in Leiden, had decided that they could no longer afford to publish it. This useful English language synopsis of Southeast Asia scholarship and scholarly publishing in Europe will be missed.

Trip Reports from the Library of Congress

The Library of Congress offices on Southeast Asia have enhanced their efforts to acquire materials from outside of the major metropolitan areas on Southeast Asia. The purpose of these trips has been primarily to strengthen and renew relationships between the local LC offices and government institutions, academic institutions, private sector organizations and NGOs in the region. Besides looking for research materials, including new publications, journals and e-resources, staff were looking for research activities and projects. We are grateful for the quality reports that the Southeast Asia staff are producing as a result of these field trips, and are excerpting them here for a wider audience. The list of organizations visited and the materials acquired serve the libraries community in their attempts to broaden contacts in the region and understand the breadth of scholarly publishing from the region.

Field Trip Report to Phetchabun, Loei, and Nong Bualamphu Provinces, November 14-18, 2005

Edited from report written by Mr. Sumet Paprakhon, Acquisitions Specialist, Library of Congress, Bangkok

During this trip, the Acquisitions Specialist visited Phetchabun Rajabhat University, the Commercial Affairs Office. (Phetchabun, Loei and Nong Bualamphu), The first Cavalry Division, Loei Rajabhat University, the Offices of the Municipal (Phetchabun, Loei and Nong Bualumphu ) and the Offices of the Provincial Administrative (Phetchabun, Loei, Nong Bualamphu ). It was noted that both Phetchabun Rajabhat University and Loei Rajabhat University are producing many research publications, most of them resulting from projects related to social conditions, government, politics, local history, and environment.

Contacts at Phetchabun Rajabhat University include those knowledgeable regarding social conditions, local history and who are likely to be publishing on related researches in the near future: Director of the Research Center, the Head of Department of Library Science, and the Director of the Cultural Center. At Loei Rajabhat University: the Director of Research Center. In local government, staff met with officials of the Policy and Planning Analysis of Provincial Administration in Phetchabun and Loei.

Important Websites.

http://www.ripb.ac.th

http://www.lru.ac.th

http://www.dnp.go.th

http://www.gotoloei.com

http://www.pchnews@yahoo.com

http://www.nongbualamphu.go.th

http://www.phetchabun.go.th

http://www.loei.nfe.go.th

Acquisition Field Trip Report to Nakhon Si Thammarat, Surat Thani and Chumphon on February 20-24, 2006

Edited from Report Prepared by Sumet Paprakhon, Acquisitions Specialist, Library of Congress

Important Institutions/Offices visited:

1. Office of The Rector of Nakhon Si Thammarat Rajabhat University.

2. Cultural Center, Nakhon Si Thammarat Rajabhat University.

3. Research and Academic Service Center, Nakhon Si Thammarat Rajabhat University

4. Provincial Administration Organization, Nakhon Si Thammarat.

5. Provincial Administration Center. Nakhon Si Thammarat.

6. Wlailak University.

7. Office of the Rector of Surat Thani Rajabhat University.

8. Research and Academic Service Center, Surat Thani Rajabhat University.

9. Provincial Administration Organization, Surat Thani.

10. Provincial Administration. Center, Surat Thani.

11. Prince of Songkhla Nakharin University, Surat Thani Campus.

Contacts : Dean of Human and Social Science Faculty, Nakhon Si Thammarat Rajabhat University, Office of the Rector, Nakhon Si Thammarat University, Director of Institute of Research and Development, Walailak University, Research and Development Institute of Surat Thani Rajabhat University. Faculty of Education, Surat Thani Rajabhat University. In local government administration: Director of Policy and Planning of Nakhon Si Thammarat Provincial Administration Organization, and the Director of Policy and Planning, Office of The Governor, Surat Thani Province.

Important Websites

Some Titles Acquired:

1. Raingan kanwichai ruang raengngan khamchat kap phon krathop thangdan setthakit lae sangkhom Thai nai khet phunthi Phak Tai tonbon = The social and economic impact of foreigns labors in Thailand’s upper South Region.

2. Laeng sinlapa watthanatham lae phumpanya thongthing Changwat Surat Thani.

3. Raingan kanwichai ruang kansamruat chanit phanphut samunphrai thi ha yak klai sunphan =An exploratory study or rare indigenous medicinal herbs in Southern Thailand.

Acquisition Field Trip Report to Khon Kaen and Nakhon Ratchasima Provinces on February 6-10, 2006

Edited from a Report Prepared by Sumet Paprakhon, Acquisitions Specialist, Library of Congress

Important institutions and offices visited:

1. Center of Arts and Culture, Lao Information Center, Khon Kaen University.

2. Research and Development Institute, Khon Kaen University.

3. Mekong Institute Foundation, Khon Kaen University

4. Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, Khon Kaen University

5. Faculty of Management Science, Khon Kaen University

6. Faculty of Architecture, Khon Kaen University.

7. Faculty of Education, Khon Kaen University

8. Faculty of Engineering, Khon Kaen University.

9. Sustainable Infrastructure Research and Development Center.

10. Center for Research on Plurality in the Mekong Region, Khon Kaen University.

11. Bank of Thailand. Northeastern Region.

12. Nakhon Ratchasima Rajabhat University.

13. Research and Development Institute of Suranaree University of Technology.

The following institutions provided important contacts regarding social conditions, local history and are likely to be publishing on related researches in the future: the Editor of Warasan Manutsayasat and Songkhomsat, The Communications and Publications Officer of Mekong Institute Foundation, the Academic Center of Chulalongkorn Buddhist University; the Director of the Research and Development Institute of Nakhon Ratchasima Rajabhat University; Director of the Research and Development of Suranaree University of Technology. Other local government entities: Directorate of the Policy and Planning Analysis of Nakhon Ratchasima Provincial Administration.

Important Websites

http://www.kku.ac.th

http://www.huso.kku.ac.th/

http://www.ora.kku.ac.th

http://www.rdikku.kku.ac.th/

http://www.plurality.net/

http://www.nrru.ac.th

Some Monographs Acquired

1. Phaenthi phasa khong klum chattiphan tang tang nai Prathet Thai = Ethnolinguistic maps of Thailand

2. Kansuksa kanplianplaeng thang watthanatham lae sangkhom thi mi …= The social and cultural impact on local economy of Vientiane Municipality.

3. Kankha chaidaen Thai kap phuanban 5 prathet (Malasia, Burma, China, Lao and Cambodia)

4. Raingan kanwichai ruang kankaekhai panha kanthutcharit nai rabop kanmuang lae wong ratchakan Thai ( Political and Bureaucratic Corruption

5. Kankha chaidaen : khrongsang talat kankha chaidaen Thai-Lao, Mukdahan

6. Raingan chabap sombun khati khwamchua lae rabop sangkhom…= Study of belief and social aspects in the formation of Phu Tai traditional house.

7. Prawattisat thongthin

8. Prawattisat thongthin : withi baep pa tawanok phun sutthai

9. Chumchon lae ruan Thai-Loei = Tai-Loei community and vernacular house

Acquisition Field Trip Report to Udon Thani and Vientiane, March 1-4, 2006

Edited from a Report Prepared by Sunantha Muangnil

This is the first trip to Laos via bus and I must admit I faced many troubles and challenges on this trip. One of the obstacles was carrying all the books from Laos to Thailand on the bus; in addition the boarder control was very strict. There were many books which I had intended to acquire for LC but due to the lack of time I was unable to find them. I feel that this trip to Laos was somewhat productive; however, it could have been better had there been more time spent in each location. Busses on the Isan route often break down, which leads to a delay in the schedule. I suggest that for future trips to Isan should be for longer periods of time and should only be in Thailand. I do not advise crossing the Thai-Laos boarder by bus.

On the trip I visited the following institutes:

1. At the Udon Thani Rajabhat University. The Director of Cultural Center greeted me. In addition Prof. Srivan gave LC 2 copies of Khomun thang Watthanatham Changwat Udon Thani for LC and CRL. I was informed that this year the Cultural Center will do research on “Senthan Phadaeng Nang Ai,” which is expected to be a major source of education for ecotourism in Udon Thani province. There will be a team of researchers who will travel to all the local areas to study the probability of ecotourism along the route to Phadaeng Nang Ai. Through this they hope that the research team will be able to educate and prepare the local people in that area in understanding how ecotourism would be beneficial for them and their surrounding.

2. I met with the Director of Social Research and Development Institute, Udon Thani Rajabhat University. I learnt that the Rajabhat Institute was only recognized by the Ministry of Education as a University three years ago. After it was recognized as a University, the government along with the private sector provided funding for Rajabhat Universities in support of any research team to continue studies on Isan community. Through this it is expected that the research team will assist local villages in educating, training and supporting local villagers to be more sufficient in their local communities along with creating a sustainable community. I received 10 copies of the research work for LC.

3. At the Udon Thani Chamber of Commerce, I received 3 back issues of the annual report from 2003, 2004.

4. I visited the Provincial Environment Office 9, where I received 2 research papers on the environment in Udon Thani, and was informed that every year the Environment Office will produced 4-5 publications on the environment in Udon and the Northern Regions.

5. I also visited Office of Election Commission of Udon Thani Province and received 5 books which mainly on plan and policy of senate’s election, which will be elected in April 2006.

6. I met the Governor of Udon Thani province who gave me 5 books on the provincial development strategy.

7. I was able to acquire 2 books from the Social Action Center. It’s a center that does religious work (Catholic) in Udon Thani and not primarily focuses on publishing publications but mainly social community developments.

Results for Vientiane Trip:

1. I met only briefly with our new representative in Vientiane, but I believe that as a result of this briefing she will have fewer problems, and the number of quality books acquired for LC will be increasing.

2. I met Khun Chaleunxai Phommabongsa and we discussed his plans to write a book on Wat Srisaket and Wat Pra Keaw. However due to limited financial support he is uncertain whether his plans will be met. It is expected by the end of 2006, he should be able to find some source of financial aid to publish the book.

3. At the Mekong River Commission, I met with Mr. Sodasith Sisommuch Assistant Librarian Documentation Center of MRC who explained that MRC books are distributed. He gave LC 15 books altogether and gave me a list of MRC’s publications.

4. I visited the UNDP library but unfortunately the library has closed down.

5. At the Lao Women’s Union I was informed that 2005 was the 50^th anniversary of the Lao Women’s Union and they had published “Valasan chabap phiset 50 pi Mae Ying Lao for sale. GRID is one of the Centers under Women’s Union which publishes Mae Ying Lao newspaper and works on the role of youth and gender in Laos. I bought the back issues of Mae Ying Lao newspaper from June 2005 till the present for LC and participants and made the subscription of 2006 for LC and participants.

6. The Vientiane State bookshop and the morning market are the best places that we could get the government’s publication, which is published for sale. The publications here are mostly in Lao, which is mainly on politics, human right, law book and sociology in Laos. At the morning market I was informed that there now no movies produced in Laos.

Outstanding Books and Non-Books Collected :

1. Raingan kanwichai mae tha nattasin nai rammuai boran.

2. Hun lakhon lek kap kanthaithot = Technic of the method puppet Thailand’s performance arts.

3. Phruktikam kansupburi kandumsura lae kanmiphetsamphan khong wairun nai changwat Udon Thani.

4. Phaen kanluaktang samachik sapha phuthaen ratsadon pen kanluaktang thuapai.

5. Raingan kanwichai kanpramoen phon kanpatibat kantosu phua ao chana yaseptit changwat Undon Thani.

6. Khomun watthanatham Changwat Udon Thani.

7. Saritphong lae khuan kannam boran nai prathet Thai.

8. So Po Po Lao (30 pi) 1975-2005.

9. 50 pi Phak Pachason Patiwat Lao : 22 Mina 1955-2005

10. Khvaeng Saiyaburi = Sayaboury Province

11. Banda chonphao nai So Po Po Lao = The ethnics groups in Lao P.D.R.

12. Moladok vannakhadi Lao : The literary heritage of Laos, preservation, dissemination and research perspectives.

13. Social atlas of the Lower Mekong Basin.

14. Kotmai ratthathammanun haeng So Po Po Lao.

15. Kotmai wa dui sanpasason haeng SoPoPo Lao.

16. Kotmai wa dui faifa bohae

17. Religious affairs in Lao P.D.R

18. Report on the assessment of forest cover and land use during 1992-2002

19. The development of Lao Government

20. Khomun sathiti 1975-2005

21. Report on micro and small enterprise development in Lao PDR.

Non-books :

Tamnan Nonghan Luang Sakon Nakhon
Tamnan Phadaeng – Nang Ai
Lakhon Phachao Fa Ngum Maharat

New Serial Titles:

Daen Isan yuk mai = Dan Esan news.
Khao thongthin = City newspaper of Udonthani

Acquisition Field Trip Report to Bandar Seri Begawan, Brunei Darussalam, Kota Kinabalu and Sandakan, Sabah, March 03-14, 2006.

Edited from a Report Prepared by M.Lingeswaran, Acquisitions Specialist, Library of Congress

In March 2006, I initiated a visit to Brunei with the objective of acquiring publications. From this recent trip I learned that publishing industry and trends of publishing have no tremendous changes. The tasks ahead include trying to gather information on the source of materials in Brunei, and shipping from Brunei. A follow-up on this will be discussed with the book agent in Brunei during Kuala Lumpur Book Fair this month. The Brunei Book Fair was a useful time where many of Government departments participated in the exhibition. New sources of publications are being traced from Chinese in Brunei and as an initial stage I visited major Chinese schools and writer’s associations. Quite a lot of new titles have been acquired from this trip compared with previous years.

I acquired many books from Kota Kinabalu and Sandakan, Sabah, especially from the Universiti Malaysia Sabah. I was able to acquire books which have not been on sale in the past; I have been waited for these titles for many years. Many back issues of serials were claimed, especially from Statistical Department of Sabah and Government printers. With the help of Sabah State Library Corporation I have new sources from associations in Sabah, individual writers, clubs and other publishers. If we had exchange materials to provide we could have done even better, a major target for my next trip.

This initial visit to Sandakan, Sabah did not yield many materials, but I acquired many high research value materials from the Forestry department of Sandakan. I managed to get some serial back issues, but due to the limited number of copies available there will be some shortage of copies for participants. Materials from associations were also acquired, mainly from the Chinese clans namely, Hakka and Hokkien Associations. There are a small number of Chinese books published in Sandakan by individual writers.

Report of an Acquisitions Field Trip to Singapore, Kuching, Sibu and Miri (Sarawak) Feb. 12-26, 2006

Edited from a Report Prepared by Sandra K.N. Tjahjana

The objective of this trip was to enhance LC acquisition coverage from Singapore and Sarawak. This is the first trip which emphasized on Chinese publications for the Library of Congress and the participants. This trip was also to establish and explore new networks with Chinese institutions, and strengthen our relationship with overseas vendors.

Result and conclusions

From this trip, I acquired about 300 titles of monographs, serials and non-book, and mostly are Chinese publications.

Singapore: I discussed with our Singapore supplier about increasing the book acquisition from Singapore, especially Chinese, beside Malay and also Tamil publications, but later I found out from visiting “Little India” that there were no Tamil publications published in Singapore, except school text books, as told by the shop owners. I acquired useful information on Singapore publications and Chinese associations.

Kuching, Sibu and Miri: From the NUS Chinese Library, Singapore, I received a contact at International Times Sdn. Bhd., where I got some interesting publications and also references on important persons to visit in Kuching, Sibu and Miri. I also visited the Sarawak Chinese Writers’ Association. I was informed that nowadays interest in reading local Chinese publications in Sarawak has declined. It is also difficult to find local Chinese publications in bookstores, because writers sell their works directly. They don’t want to put them in the bookstores, since it is hard to receive payment. So, to acquire Chinese titles from Sarawak, we have to deal directly with the authors and publishers, and also we have to know local prominent people who will give us useful information on publishing in the region.

This was the first trip to Sibu and Miri. The Sarawak Chinese Cultural Association, and the Chief Editor, Board of Christian Literature, Sarawak Chinese Annual Conference, are useful resources in Sibu. Mostly Chinese publications acquired from Miri, including from the Miri Chinese Chamber of Commerce and Industry, and also members of Miri Chinese Writers Association.

List of Institutions Visited

I. Singapore, Feb. 13-Feb. 15, 2006:

INSTITUTIONS/BOOKSHOPS VISITED	CHINESE NAMES
Asian Civilisations Museums:
Book store at Bras Basah Complex	今古书画店
Chinese Library, NUS Libraries
Chinese Heritage Center	华裔馆
Nam Hoi Clan Association	新加坡南海同乡会
Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts
National Library Board, Singapore
Pustaka Nasional book shop
Singapore Art Museum
Singapore Associations of Writer	新加坡作家协会
Singapore Bukit Timah Heng-Jai Friendly Association	新加坡武吉知马琼崖联谊会
Singapore Chinese Chamber of Commerce and Industry	新加坡中华总商会
Singapore Federation of Chinese Clans Association	新加坡宗乡会馆联合总会
Singapore Hokkien Huay Kuan	新加坡福建会馆
Singapore National Wushu Federation	新加坡全国武术总会
URA (Urban Redevelopment Area)
Yin Fo hui kun	应和会馆
Kinokuniya book shop
Little India (book shops)

II. Kuching, Feb. 16-Feb. 18, 2006:

INSTITUTIONS/BOOKSHOPS VISITED	CHINESE NAMES
Angkatan Zaman Mansang (AZAM) Sarawak
Borneo Research Center
Dewan Bahasa dan Pustaka, Sarawak
International Times Sdn. Bhd	国际时报有限公司
Jiang Xi hui guan	江西会馆
Kuching Buddhist Society	居士林出版社
Kuching Hainan Association	古晋海南公会
Kuching Hockien Association	古晋福建公会
Kwong Wai Siew Association Kuching	古晋广惠肇公会
Persatuan Penulis Aliran Tionghua Sarawak	砂劳越华文作家协会
Persatuan Teochew Kuching	古晋潮州公会
Popular Bookshop at Tun Jugah
Sarawak Chinese Museum
Sarawak Hakka Community Association	砂劳越客属公会
Sarawak Hopoh Association	砂劳越河婆同乡会
Sarawak Museum
Sarawak State Library
Sarawak United Peoples’ Party	砂拉越人民联合党
Tai Poo Community Association	晋汉斯大埔同乡会
The Federation of Chinese Association	砂拉越华人社团联合总会
The Hing Ann Association Kuching	古晋兴安会馆
Universiti Malaysia Sarawak

III. Sibu, Feb. 20-Feb.22, 2006:

INSTITUTIONS/BOOKSHOPS VISITED	CHINESE NAMES
Board of Christina Literature.	马来西亚基督教卫理公会
Sarawak Chinese Annual Conference	砂劳越华人年议会文字事业部
Datuk Liu Hui Xiong's
Dewan Suarah Sibu
Dr. Hu Chang Hock Robert	许赞福医生
Persekutuan Persatuan-Persatuan Foochow Sarawak	砂罗越福州社团联合总会
Rajang Bookstore	拉让书局
Sarawak Central Chiang Hsia Huang Clan Association	砂拉越中区江夏黄氏公会
Sarawak Chinese Cultural Association	砂拉越华族文化协会
Sarawak Christian Literature Fellowship	砂拉越基督徒写作人协会
Sarawak Taiwan Graduate Association	砂拉越留台同學會詩巫分會
Sarawak United Peoples’ Party, Sibu Division	砂拉越人民联合党
Sibu Chinese Chamber of Commersce and Industry	诗巫中华工商总会
Sibu Chinese Chamber of Commersce and Industry	诗巫中华工商总会
Ling Chu Ming Culture Hall	林子明文化馆
Sibu Friendship Association	诗巫友谊协会
United Chinese Association Sibu Division Sarawak	诗巫省华人社团联合会
Wong Meng Lei (Author)	黃孟禮
World Bookstore	世界书局
World Fuzhou Heritage Gallery	砂罗越福州社团文化馆

IV. Miri, Feb. 23-Feb. 25, 2006:

INSTITUTIONS/BOOKSHOPS VISITED	CHINESE NAMES
Belle’s Bookshop
Che Sing Khor Moral Uplifting Society	美里德教会紫星阁
Federation of the Miri Division Chinese Associations Sarawak	砂劳越美里省华人社团联合会
Kwong Wai Siew Association Miri Division	美里省广惠肇公
Liang Hua Printing Sdn. Bhd	联华印务有限公司
Miri Chawan Association	美里诏安会馆
Miri Chinese Chamber of Commerce and Industry	美里中华工商总会
Miri Chinese Writers Association	砂拉越美里笔会
Miri Foochow Association	美里福州公会
Miri Heritage Center
Perpustakaan Awam Miri, Majlis Bandaraya Miri
Persatuan Hakka Miri	美里客家公会
Persatuan Teochew Miri	美里潮州公会
Pustaka Miri, Pustaka Negeri Sarawak
Sarawak Miri Hopoh Association	砂劳越美里河婆同乡会
Sarawak Tourism Board
TV10 Professional Video Production
Union Books	联合书局
United Daily News	联合日报
University of Curtin
Wen Nan Guang	温南光先生

D. Websites

Singapore

www.bukittimahhainan.org

www.museumshop.com.sg

www.yingfofuikun.org.sg

Kuching

www.azam.org.my/library

www.dawama.com

www.hua-zong.org

www.intimes.com.my

www.kwong-wai-siew-kch.org

www.supp.org.my

www.unimas.my

Sibu

www.foochowgateway.com

www.sarawakmethodist.org

Miri

http://a.lasphost.com/mirihopo

www.cccm.com.my

Report of an Acquisitions Trip to Surabaya and Malang at 12-23 March, 2006

Prepared By Tri Martini

Objectives : Collecting current publications in any formats from East Java for the Library of Congress and for participants CAPSEA participants by visiting local government institutions, non government organizations, state and private universities, bookstores and publishers. Based on a book entitled Directory Press 2006 there are about 33 publishers in Surabaya, but only 10 publishers published books which in scope for LC and participants. Also strengthen relationships with some publishers.

Results : A total of 292 new monograph titles, 20 new titles in CD/VCD formats, and about 261 back issues of serials have been acquired from Surabaya and Malang.

LC has made some new contacts with potential sources of publications in this area.

Institutions/Offices Visited:

These are the following important institutions and offices visited:

1. Lembaga Javanologi

2. Lembaga Pengkajian Agama dan Demokrasi

3. Univ. Muhammadiyah Malang Press and Fak. Hukum Univ. Brawijaya)

4. Fak. Hukum Univ. Brawijaya

5. Balai Pengembangan Teknologi Pertanian (BPTP)

6. Balai Penelitian Kacang-kacangan dan Umbi-umbian (BALITKABI)

7. Balai Penelitian Tembakau dan Tanaman Serat,

8. The Governor office of East Java Province

9. Universitas Islam Negeri Sunan AMpel

10. Petra University

Best Titles Received

The most interesting place I visited was “Villa Flamboyan”, a house in Malang where DR Azahari was killed, the most wanted person in Indonesia related to Bali Bomb 1 & 2, Marriot Hotel & Australian Embassy bomb blast. From this villa I bought 3 following VCDs for LC and also for CAPSEA participants:

1. Flamboyan Blast

2. Flamboyan Blast (Special edition)

3. The Death of DR Azahari

	Name of Institutions
Surabaya	Research Center of PETRA University
	Research Center of Airlangga University
	Research Center of IAIN SUNAN AMPEL
	Research Center of Surabaya Technology Institute
	Research Center of Surabaya Public University
	Research Center of Surabaya University
	Human Rights Research Center of Surabaya University
	Humas Univ. Petra
	Architecture Faculty of PETRA University
	Adab Faculty of IAIN Sunan Ampel
	Political and Social Science Faculty of Airlangga University
	Library of Airlangga University
	American Corner of Airlangga Unviersity
	Sampoerna Corner of Airlangga University
	Governor Office
	DPRD
	BKPMD
	BAPPEDA
	Dinas Pariwisata
	Dinas Pendidikan dan Kebudayaan
	BPS
	BAPEDAL
	Komisi Perlindungan Anak
	Lembaga Javanologi
	Jawa Pos for Pro Democracy
	PB Nahdlatul Ulama
	Lembaga Pengkajian Agama dan Democracy
	Dewan Kesenian Propinsi Jawa Atimur
	Gramedia, Basuki Rakhmat
	Gramedia,Tunjungan
	Gunung Agung
	Kharisma
	Togo Mas
	Paramitha
	Ridaka
	Kwan
	Airlangga University Press
	University Press IKIP Surabaya
	ITS Press
	Jawa Pos (JEPE Press Media Utama)
	Anugerah Persada
	Artika Cipta
	Cipta Anugerah
	Citra Pelajar Group
	Djojobojo
	Edumassa
	Edumedia
	Express
	Galeri Wacana
	Guyub Rukun Ing Panguripan
	Karunia
	Media Alas Dayu
	Paramitra Pustaka
	Pustaka Melati
	Tatiana Dewi Persada
	Trijaya Pustakaraya
	Trubus Agrisarana
	Widyantara Adipustaka
	Gradita Utama
	Dian Murni Sejati
	Pustaka Lintas Budaya

	Name of institutions
Malang	Library of Unibraw University
	Lemlit UNIBRAW
	Lemlit Universitas Merdeka Malang
	Lemlit Univ. Negeri Malang
	Lemlit STAIN
	Lemlit Univ. Muhammadiyah Malang
	Fak Hukum Unibraw
	Balai Pengembangan Teknologi Pertanian
	Balai Penelitian Kacang-kacangan dan Umbi-umbian
	Balai Penelitian Tembakau dan Tanaman Serat
	Yayasan Pekabaran Injil Baru
	Pusat Pengembangan Otonomi Daerah Univ. Brawijaya
	JARAK Malang
	LPKP Malang
	Yayasan Paramita
	Gramedia
	Wilis
	Dian Ilmu
	Toga Mas
	Merdeka Univ. Press
	IKIP Bookstore
	Univ. IKIP Press Malang
	Univ. Muhammadiyah Malang Press
	Disc Tara
	Villa "Flamboyan"
	Dioma
	Banyu Media
	In-Trans

Select Dissertations Defended

France

Berment, Vincent. «Méthodes pour informatiser les langues et les groupes de langues « peu dotées » ». Boitet Christian (Dir.). Université Joseph-Fourier - Grenoble I, 2004., 2004. (http://tel.ccsd.cnrs.fr/tel-00006313)

Boyle, David « Autodétermination, Démocratie, Justice Pénale Internationale, les Nations Unies et le Cambodge, 1979-2003. Thèse, 2004.
Référence : 44212. 04PA020035 (http://www.anrtheses.com.fr)

Bui-Thi K.-H . « Une étude didactique de la vie de l'Energie dans l'enseignement de la Physique, en France et au Vietnam. Des décalages entre savoirs à enseigner au Lycée et savoirs de la formation universitaire peuvent-ils être source de difficultés pour les enseignants ? » Claire Wajeman, Annie Bessot (Dir.) Université Joseph-Fourier - Grenoble I, 2005. http://tel.ccsd.cnrs.fr/index.php?halsid=286f3d9edfda9d1ae4c85bafbb3265b6&view_this_doc=tel-00012001&version=1)

Chauvet, Claire. Du commerce avec les espits des Quatre Palais. Etude d’un culte de possession à Ha Nôi (Viet Nam) . Université de Paris X Nanterre. Thèse d’ethnologie. Dir. Bernard Formoso. 2004.

Cunin, Olivier. « De Ta Prohm au Bayon, Analyse comparative de l'histoire architecturale des principaux monuments du style du Bayon, » Paul Jean-Claude (Dir.) Institut National Polytechnique de Lorraine – INPL, 2004. (http://tel.ccsd.cnrs.fr/docs/00/04/74/33/PDF/tel-00007699.pdf)

Do, Thi Huong Nhu

« Du Nantissement à la Sûreté de Parts Sociales et d’actions en Droit Vietnamien (Approche Comparative, Critiques et Propositions). Thèse, 2005

Référence : 46889. 05PA020005 (http://www.anrtheses.com.fr/)

Fontenelle, Jean-Philippe. Dynamiques agraires, irrigation et institutions dans le delta du Fleuve Rouge (Viêt Nam), une analyse multi-scalaire de la gestion agricole de l’eau. Université Catholique de Louvrain. Thèse de doctorat en agronomie. Dir Paul Mathieur et Pierre Defourny. 2004.

Jacob-De la Lavenere, Véronique. « Orgues à bouche du Laos. » Université Paris IV Sorbonne. Thèse d’ethnomusicologie. Dir. François Picard, 2004.

Nguyên Thien Phu, « Un modèle vietnamien de transport urbain : utopie ou réalités? » Dirigée par Jean-Michel Cusset.

Thèse pour le doctorat de sciences économiques à l'Université Lumière Lyon 2, 2005.

Pattinama, Max Marcus Jozef. « Les Geba Bupolo et leur milieu. Population de l’ ile de Buru, Moluques, Indonésie. Liwit lalen hafak lalen snafat lahin butemen » = « Vannerie virile, sarong féminin et émulsion qui flue. » Dir. Claudine Friedeberg et Marie Roue. Muséum National d’ Histoire Naturelle. Thèse d’ethnoécologie, 2005.

Picchard-Bertaux, Louise. « Fiction, ville et société : le milieu urbain dans les nouvelles thaïes contemporaines. » Dir. Gilles Delouche. INALCOP Hautes Etudes Asie Pacifiques, 2004.

Pesses, Abigael. « Les Karen: Horizons d’une Population Frontiere. » " Mise en Scene de l’ Indigegenisme et Ecologie en Thailande". Dir. Bernard Formoso. Université Nanterre Paris X. Thèse d’ethnologie, 2004. Référence : 45740. 04PA100155 (http://www.anrtheses.com.fr/)

Socquet , Anne. « Accommodation du mouvement relatif entre l'Inde et la Sonde depuis la faille de Sagaing (Birmanie) jusqu'à la Syntaxe Est Himalayenne. » Université Paris Sud - Paris XI - (2003-12-19), Vigny Christophe (Dir.), 2003. (http://tel.ccsd.cnrs.fr/docs/00/04/68/19/PDF/tel-00006110.pdf)

Stoffer, Florentius « Le Régulation Internationale de la Crise Indonésienne: Entre Processus de Démocratisation et Restauration Autoritaire. » Thèse, 2004.
Référence : 43871. 04IEPP0005

United Kingdom

Haendel, Alexandra. “The temples of King Ra jendravarman: tenth century architecture at Angkor.” University of London, SOAS.

Jenkins, Gwynn. “Contested space: heritage and identityu reconstructions. An inquiry ito conservation strategies in a developing Asian city: George Town (Penang), Malaysia.” University of Hull.

Omar, Rahilah. “The diary of Sultan Ahmad-as-Salleh and the history of Bone, South Sulawesi, 1775-1795.” University of Hull.

Wan Suhana b. Wan Sulong. “Saudara (1928-1941): Its contribution to the debate on issues in Malay society and the development of a Malay world-view.” University of Hull.

Winkels, Alexandra. “Migratory livelihoods in Vietnam: vulnerability and the role of migrant networks. University of East Anglia.

Australia

Ha, Tuan Anh. “Critical aspects related to successful IT implementation in Vietnam : a doctoral thesis. Submitted to the fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy - Australian Graduate School of Entrepreneurship, Swinburne University of Technology, 2004. IdentifierNBD:25974448

Huynh, Boi Tran “Vietnamese Aesthetics From 1925 Onwards.” University of Sydney, 2005. Identifierhttp://setis.library.usyd.edu.au./adt/public_html/adt-NU/public/adt-NU20051129.150029

http://setis.library.usyd.edu.au/adt/public_html/adt-NU/public/adt-NU20051129.150029/

Neilson, Jeffrey. “Embedded geographies and quality construction in Sulawesi coffee commodity chains.” Thesis (Ph. D.)--School of Geosciences, Faculty of Science, University of Sydney, 2004.Identifier[NBD] NBD:26367160

Nguyen, Tuan Ngoc. “Socialist Realism in Vietnamese Literature: An Analysis of the Relationship Between Literature and Politics” Thesis, Victoria University. Communication, Culture and Languages. 2004. http://wallaby.vu.edu.au/adt-VVUT/public/adt-VVUT20050131.112703/

Nguyen, Thi Duc Hanh “Civil service ethics and corruption : a comparative study of Vietnam and the United States.” Thesis (M.A.)--University of Melbourne, Dept. of Political Science, Faculty of Arts, 2004. IdentifierNBD:26195460

Poerwanto, Siswo. “The inequality in infant mortality in Indonesia : evidence-based information and its policy implications.” 2004

http://theses.library.uwa.edu.au/adt-WU2003.0039/

Santry, Petre Ann Victoria. “When Apsaras Smile : Women and Development in Cambodia 1990-2000 : Cultural Barriers to Change.” 2005.

Identifierhttp://wallaby.vu.edu.au/adt-VVUT/public/adt-VVUT20051205.093642

University. http://wallaby.vu.edu.au/adt-VVUT/public/adt-VVUT20051205.093642/

Stehle, Wolfgang “Transfer of human resource policies and practices from German multinational companies to their subsidiaries in South East Asia.” University of Southern Queensland, 2004.

Identifierhttp://adt.usq.edu.au./adt-QUSQ/public/adt-QUSQ20050623.123242

Trinh, Lieu Thi Thuy. “Antenatal Care In Three Provinces Of Vietnam: Long An, Ben Tre And Quang Ngai.” University of Newcastle, Population Medicine and Public Health, 2005. http://www.newcastle.edu.au/service/library/adt/public/adt-NNCU20060516.142534/

Tuan , Tran “Community-Based Evidence about the Health Care System in Rural Vietnam.” Thesis, University of Newcastle, School of Medicine Practice and Population Health, 2004. http://www.newcastle.edu.au/service/library/adt/public/adt-NNCU20050806.101920/

Vo, Hong Nga “Nexus between organisational culture and IT implementation in Vietnamese organisations : a doctoral thesis.” Swinburne University of Technology. Australian Graduate School of Entrepreneurship, 2005.

Identifierhttp://adt.lib.swin.edu.au./public/adt-VSWT20050804.154229. http://adt.lib.swin.edu.au/public/adt-VSWT20050804.154229/

Vujanovic, Suzan “Young Vietnamese Children's Conceptions of Play.” Queensland University of Technology, 2005.

Identifierhttp://adt.library.qut.edu.au./adt-qut/public/adt-QUT20060424.111022. http://adt.library.qut.edu.au/adt-qut/public/adt-QUT20060424.111022/

Waddell, Sarah Kathleen. “The Role of the 'Legal Rule' in Indonesian Law: environmental law and the reformasi of water management.” University of Sydney, 2004. Identifierhttp://setis.library.usyd.edu.au./adt/public_html/adt-NU/public/adt-NU20050120.160817

http://setis.library.usyd.edu.au/adt/public_html/adt-NU/public/adt-NU20050120.160817/

Wyatt, Andrew B. “Infrastructure development and BOOT in Laos and Vietnam : a case study of collective action and risk in transitional developing economies.” Thesis (Ph. D.)--Division of Geography, School of Geosciences , Faculty of Science, University of Sydney, 2004. IdentifierNBD:26465160

Cormosea Bulletin

Volume 29 (June 2006)

The Future of Scholarly Research Trends of Southeast Asian Studies

Jeffrey Hadler, Department of South/Southeast Asian Studies, University of California, Berkeley

Field Trip Report to Phetchabun, Loei, and Nong Bualamphu Provinces, November 14-18, 2005

Important Websites.

Acquisition Field Trip Report to Nakhon Si Thammarat, Surat Thani and Chumphon on February 20-24, 2006

Important Websites

Acquisition Field Trip Report to Khon Kaen and Nakhon Ratchasima Provinces on February 6-10, 2006

Important Websites

Edited from a Report Prepared by Sunantha Muangnil

Outstanding Books and Non-Books Collected :

Non-books :

Best Titles Received