Southeast Asian Studies

The University of Michigan Libraries houses one of the largest collections of Southeast Asia-related material in the United States, with particularly extensive collections related to the Philippines, Thailand, and Indonesia. Below is an overview of the University’s most notable holdings for each country. Please see the “Information by Country” tab for more detailed information and direct links to collections pertaining to each country.

The University of Michigan was heavily involved in the expansion of the U.S. colonial regime in the Philippines. Several U-M faculty and students traveled to the Philippines through the late 19th and early 20th centuries to conduct their research, often taking home with them zoological, anthropological, and archeological materials, much of which were deposited with the university, creating one of the largest collections of Philippine-related material in the U.S. The U-M Libraries Special Collections houses the Philippine History Collection, composed primarily of the materials of Dean Conant Worcester, U-M assistant professor of zoology who served as a member of the United States Philippine Commission and secretary of the interior for the Insular Government of the Philippine Islands. There are two digitized collections, the Philippine Photographs Digital Archive, comprising over 2,100 photographs of the Philippines, and The United States and its Territories, 1870 - 1925: The Age of Imperialism, which is composed of documents from American governance in the Philippines (1898-1910). The William L. Clements library also houses several related collections pertaining to the Philippines, including the Revolutionary Philippines and Cuba Collection, as well as several series of correspondence between U.S. servicemen stationed in the Philippines in the mid-20th century. Recently, strides have been made to consider the repatriation of materials gained through colonial expansion and the building of connections with communities of origin in the Philippines, through the Reconnect/Recollect Project, led by U-M Professors Ricardo Punzalan (School of Information) and Deirdre de la Cruz (Anthropology and History).

U-M Libraries also holds a significant collection of material from Thailand, especially as it relates to Buddhism, literature, and linguistics. The U-M Libraries Special Collections and the Bentley Historical Library house the William J. Gedney Collection. Gedney, professor of Linguistics at the University of Michigan from 1960-1980, was a pioneering scholar of Thai linguistics, establishing Thai-language study at the University. The collection includes over 6,000 monographs, manuscripts, and serial titles focused on Thai history and culture, with an emphasis on Thai Buddhism and the history of the Chakri dynasty. The collection also includes a number of Khmer and Pali-Thai manuscripts that have been microfilmed to ensure preservation. U-M Libraries Special Collections also holds several 18th-19th century bamboo and palm-leaf manuscripts on Thai Buddhism, literature, astrology, and medicine. The William L. Clements Library holds the Hemenway Family Collection, which includes materials from an American missionary family based in Thailand through the mid-19th century, as well as several smaller collections from American travelers to Thailand in the 19th and early 20th centuries. The University of Michigan’s History of Art Visual Resources Collection, Breezewood Collection also includes over 3,500 photographs of Thai art and architecture.

The University possesses an extensive collection of Indonesian newspapers, as well as documents related to Dutch colonization, Islam, and political and civil unrest in Indonesia, available as microfilm at the Hatcher Graduate Library. There is also a notable collection of art and photographs from Indonesia at the University of Michigan History of Art Visual Resources Collection, including the Borobudur Collection, composed of over 4,000 slides of the temple, as well as important examples from the Breezewood Collection. The Music Library also hosts a large collection of recordings and texts on Gamelan music.

U-M also has several collections related to the Vietnam War. The Special Collections unit houses the Colonel Henry Tufts Papers (1968-1975). Tufts was a commanding officer of the U.S. Army Criminal Investigation Command who investigated the My Lai Massacre and My Son cases. The papers include extensive documentation and communication related to these investigations. There are also several collections that depict U.S.-based resistance to the Vietnam War, notably a collection of posters in the Labadie Collection, as well as several series at the Bentley Historical Library. Special Collections also holds the Thánh Gióng slides, 1970, a collection of slides produced by the Vietnamese Ministry for Education and Training in 1970 that depicts the folktale.

The U-M Libraries Special Collections holds the Kay Boyle Papers (1966-1999). Boyle was an American journalist reporting on the effects of the Vietnam War in Cambodia. The papers include a series of photographs taken in Cambodia, offering a glimpse into life in the country, which was exceptionally rare during the time period. The Hatcher Graduate Library also houses a collection of textbooks collected before the Khmer Rouge regime (1974-1979) and the subsequent destruction of academic materials.

The Southeast Asia Division of the Hatcher Library selects and acquires library materials, solicits and accepts purchase recommendations, catalogues the collection, provides assistance to library users in the use of the unit's collection, and offers formal instruction in the bibliographic resources in the unit's area of expertise. Through the acquistions and cataloging of both vernacular and English language materials from the region, we support the research and instructional needs of faculty, students, visiting scholars,and independent researchers from around the world.

While three countries - Indonesia, the Philippines, and Thailand - have received the most comprehensive attention, we are also concerned with developing the collection by increasing our holdings for the other seven countries that make up the geographic region: Brunei, Cambodia,Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar (Burma), Singapore, Timor Leste and Vietnam.

Our collection development also extends to materials that focus on Southeast Asia published in European and East Asian countries. International scholars are increasingly interested in the dynamic region of Southeast Asia and collecting these materials has become an important component of our responsibilities. In addition to the coverage of the ten Southeast Asian countries, we also collect materials pertaining to Australia, New Zealand, and the Pacific Island countries, such as Papua New Guinea, Fiji, and Palau.

This site has been developed to perform as a quick reference to the services and materials available in our Division. Additionally, this site is intended to act as an interface between the user and the ever-expanding index of resources pertaining to Southeast Asia found on the Internet.

• U-M Library Southeast Asia Image Collection

  Image bank from U-M's Southeast Asia-related images collections. The main collections focus on Thailand, Indonesia, the Philippines, and the Southeast Asia Art Foundation Archive. Restricted to U-M users.
• Southeast Asian Art Archive (1940-2006), University of Michigan History of Art Visual Resources Collection

  The Southeast Asian Art Archive is composed of seven collections, including the Southeast Asia Art Foundation Archive (SAAF), the Breezewood Collection, the Ajanta Caves Collection, the Walter Spink Indian Caves Collection, the Walter Spink Collection, the Borobudur Collection, and the American Council for Southeast Asian Art (ACSAA) Collection. The collection contains photographs and slides of Southeast Asian monuments, sculptures, Indian rock-cut architecture, and more.
• Borobudur Collection (1950-2003), University of Michigan History of Art Visual Resources Collection

  The Borobudur collection is composed of approximately 4,000 color and black-and-white slides depicting the Borobudur temple. The collection contains slides from the Southeast Asia Art Foundation (SAAF) Archive and from Patrick Young's expedition to the Buddhist temple in 1983.
• Small Southeast Asia Collections (1808-1945), University of Michigan History of Art Visual Resources Collection

  The Small Southeast Asia Collections contains photographs, postcards, and papers depicting the people and locations within several countries in the Southeast Asian region. Materials predominately focus on the Philippines with some featuring Thailand, Singapore, Vietnam, and Burma (Myanmar) circa 1890s-1945.
• Southeast Asia Art Foundation (SAAF) Archive (1950-2003), University of Michigan History of Art Visual Resources Collection

  The Southeast Asia Art Foundation (SAAF) Archive is composed of approximately 200,000 photographs of Southeast Asia artwork compiled by John Adams Thierry during the latter half of the 20th century. The photos are drawn from approximately 30 different sources, sculptures, or monuments throughout Southeastern Asia that have since been vandalized, damaged, insensitively stored, or destroyed.

Education & Libraries

• Association for Asian Studies (AAS)

  The AAS is a non-profit dedicated to the advancement of the field of Asian Studies through international exchange, networking, publications, research support, and career development.
• Institute for Southeast Asian Archaeology (ISAA)

  ISEAA is a nonprofit organization, formed in late 2013, that builds upon a core of pioneering scholarship in Southeast Asian archaeology that began in the late 1960s at the Penn Museum

  ISEAA is a nonprofit organization, formed in late 2013, that builds upon a core of pioneering scholarship in Southeast Asian archaeology that began in the late 1960s at the Penn Museum. The Institute ISEAA seeks to focus needed human, scientific, and fiscal resources for the advancement of the archaeology of Southeast Asia.
• New Mandala

  Hosted by Australia National University, New Mandala is an outlet that provides scholarly analysis and new perspectives on the politics and societies of Southeast Asian countries. It devotes its attention to the politics and societies of Southeast Asian countries, and their connections with one another.
• Southeast Asia Dissertation Reviews

  Overviews of recently defended, unpublished doctoral dissertations in a wide variety of disciplines across the Humanities and Social Sciences focused on East, South, and Southeast Asia.
• Southeast Asian Rare Books and Manuscripts Library of Congress

  List of rare books and manuscripts in various Southeast Asian languages (e.g., Balinese, Burmese, Vietnamese) open for research in the Asian Reading Room of the Library of Congress.
• Southeast Asian Serials on Microfilm Library of Congress

  This research guide lists periodicals, newspapers, and serials in Southeast Asian and other Asian languages (e.g., Burmese, Malay, Chinese) available in the Asian Reading Room and European languages in the Newspaper and Current Periodical Reading Room.
• Thailand, Laos, Cambodia Studies Association

  The Thai/Lao/Cambodian Studies Group (TLC) is an affiliate of the Southeast Asian Council (SEAC) of the Association for Asian Studies (AAS). It aims to bring together scholars and students who work in many fields and who find themselves informed by data and experiences in Thailand, Cambodia, and/or Laos.

• The State of Southeast Asia: 2023 Survey Report

  The State of Southeast Asia is an annual survey report conducted by the ASEAN Studies Centre at the ISEAS-Yusof Ishak Institute. The report includes data that seeks to gauge the views and perceptions of Southeast Asians on geopolitical developments affecting the region, key international affairs, and how ASEAN’s Dialogue Partners have engaged with the region over the preceding year.

Digital Archives

• British Library Endangered Archives Programme

  The Endangered Archives Programme (EAP) at the British Library facilitates the digitisation of archives around the world that are in danger of destruction, neglect or physical deterioration. The website provides digital access to several old and endangered manuscripts and archives from across Southeast Asia, including important collections from Vietnam, Indonesia, Laos and Thailand.
• ECHO — Cultural Heritage Online

  ECHO – Cultural Heritage Online, hosted by the Max Planck Institute for the History of Social Science, is a an open access infrastructure that provides digital access to primary documents related to the history of academic disciplines. Southeast Asia-related items include its collection of Buddhist palm leaf manuscripts.
• Committee on Research Materials on Southeast Asia (CORMOSEA)

  Repository for all Southeast Asian materials digitized under the auspices of the TICFIA Grant. Contents of this database include: palm leaf manuscripts from Cambodia and Thailand; Indonesian television archive, interview of political prisoners of East Timor.
• Constituency-Level Elections Archive (CLEA)

  Launched in 2008, the CLEA contains all election results from most countries in Southeast Asia as downloadable datasets, as well as geo-referenced election results, and individual party information.
• Dutch Studies on South Asia, Tibet, and Classical Southeast Asia

  Online bibliographical overview of Dutch scholarly activities in the field of South Asia, Tibet and classical Southeast Asia from the early 17th century up to the present.
• Digital Repository of Endangered and Affected Manuscripts in Southeast Asia (DREAMSEA)

  Based at Syarif Hidayatullah Jakarta State Islamic University (UIN) Jakarta, Indonesia, DREAMSEA aims to preserve the content of endandered manuscripts in the entire region of Southeast Asia, and to make this content fully and openly accessible online. The online repository currently contains manuscripts from Thailand, Laos, and Indonesia.
• Indochina Resource Center Records, 1960-1975

  The Indochina Resource Center was founded in 1971 to inform the American people, legislators, and the media about the war in Indochina. The IRC also disseminated information about the countries of Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam where U.S. military personnel were fighting or bombing. The IRC changed its name to the Southeast Asia Resource Center in 1976. In 1982 the organization was absorbed by Asia Research Center.
• Islam in Southeast Asia

  Provides free digital access to new series of publications from Australia National University's program for the study of Islam in Southeast Asia.
• Colonial Sources (KIT) Leiden University

  This digital collection consists of 2863 publications related to the colonial enterprise in the Dutch East and West Indies. The publications are mainly in Dutch and cover the period of the last quarter of the eighteenth century to the middle of the twentieth century.
• Mémoires d’Indochine

  Research blog provides a forum for discussion and exchange on content, sources and new research on history of decolonization in Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia.
• National Archives & Records (NARA) Access to Archival Databases

  The U.S. National Archives and Records Access to Archival Databases provides electronic access to over 50 million historical records created by more than 20 federal agencies, including unpublished primary source material and internal reports on the Khmer Rouge and the Vietnam War.
• Reconceptualizing the Cold War On-the-Ground Experiences In Asia

  Online archive of oral history collections concerning the Cold War and decolonization in Asia, with a particular focus on East, Southeast, and South Asia. Based on oral history interviews and archival research across Asia.
• SEAlang Net

  Established in 2005, with primary funding from the U.S. Department of Education's TICFIA program, the SEAlang Library provides language reference materials for Southeast Asia. Through 2009, it focused on the non-roman script languages used throughout the mainland, and from 2010-2013 concentrated on the many languages of insular Southeast Asia, including Malaysia, Indonesia, and the Philippines. Resources include: bilingual and monolingual dictionaries, monolingual text corpora and aligned bitext corpora, tools for manipulating, searching, and displaying complex scripts, and specialized reference works, including historical and etymological dictionaries.
• South China Sea Virtual Library

  Online reference resource for students, scholars and policy-makers interested in South China Sea regional development. Items include maps, photos, scholarly publications, and a research guide.
• Southeast Asia Program Data Papers Series, Cornell University

  The Data Papers were published by the Cornell University Southeast Asia Program from 1950 through 1982 as a means to foster research in Southeast Asian Studies. This series includes dictionaries, annotated translations of significant works, fieldwork reports, bibliographies, and historical analyses of important social and political developments in Southeast Asia.
• Southeast Asia Digital Library (SEADL) Northern Illinois University

  Provides educators, students, scholars and members of the general public with a wide variety of materials published or otherwise produced in Southeast Asia. Drawn largely from the collections of universities and scholars in this region, SEADL contains digital facsimiles of books and manuscripts, as well as multimedia materials and searchable indexes of additional Southeast Asian resources.
• Southeast Asian Images and Texts University of Wisconsin

  From the University of Wisconsin Digital Collections. Brings together primary and secondary resource, research and teaching materials held by the library and faculty.
• Southeast Asia in the Ming Shi-lu

  These collected texts, which run to close to 40,000 pages of unpunctuated, manuscript Classical Chinese constitute one of the most important primary texts of the Ming dynasty, and contain a wealth of materials unrecorded in other sources.
• Southeast Asia Posters University of Hawai'i

  Digital resources of posters produced from the different countries of Southeast Asia. At the moment, Indonesia has the most posters digitized.
• Southeast Asia Visions Cornell University

  European travel accounts of pre-modern Southeast Asia drawn from the Echols Collection, Cornell University Library. Provides on line access to books written in English and French. It also includes phorographs,drawings, maps and images.
• World Digital Library Library of Congress

  Access to the world's significant primary materials. The project was the vision of James Billington to provide international and inter-cultural understanding of the world.

Regional Institutes & Organizations

• Asia Indigenous Peoples Pact

  The Asia Indigenous Peoples Pact (AIPP) is a regional organization founded in 1992 by indigenous peoples’ movements. AIPP is committed to the cause of promoting and defending indigenous peoples’ rights and human rights and articulating issues of relevance to indigenous peoples. At present, AIPP has 46 members from 14 countries in Asia with 18 indigenous peoples’ national alliances/networks (national formations), 30 local and sub-national organizations.
• Asian Development Bank (ADB)

  Offers access to the ADB's Key Indicators Database (KIDB), which is the Bank's central statistical database and one of the world's most comprehensive resources for macroeconomic and social indicators from across Asia and the Pacific.
• Asia Pacific Forum on Women, Law and Development

  APWLD is the leading network of feminist organisations and individual activists in Asia and the Pacific. It is composed of 265 members represent groups of diverse women from 30 countries in Asia and the Pacific. Over the past 34 years, APWLD has actively worked towards advancing women’s human rights and Development Justice.
• Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) Secretariat Resource Centre

  The ASEAN Secretariat Resource Centre (ARC) provides access to reports, serials, photos, and other media produced and maintained by ASEAN.
• Mekong River Commission

  The MRC is an intergovernmental organization for regional dialogue and cooperation pertaining to water diplomacy in the Lower Mekong River Basin. The MRC website publishes data pertaining to the conditions of the Mekong River spanning over 100 years.
• Open Development Mekong

  Open Development Initiative (ODI) offers a constantly evolving platform to support the transparent sharing and analysis of data to improve and inform constructive dialogue and decision making for sustainable and equitable development. ODI has been active in the open data sector in the Mekong region since 2011. The first of ODI’s open data projects, Open Development Cambodia independently aggregates information across a wide range of sectors to draw a development portrait employing innovative visuals, including GIS mapping and time lapse animation of development issues.

Regional Reference Resources

• Asia Maps, Perry-Castañeda Library Map Collection, University of Texas Libraries

  This resource provides access to over 250,000 maps, including historical, political, and topical regional maps of Southeast Asia, as well as individual countries and cities.
• National Statistical Offices and Central Bank Web Archive

  The Archive aims to preserve country statistical office and central bank websites that often contain ephemeral statistical data on topics such as economic conditions, population, education, housing, environmental conditions, transportation, health, social services, vital statistics, and more.
• USAID Development Experience Clearinghouse (DEC)

  The DEC provides access to nearly 50 years of reports, publications, and other materials produced by international development and research projects that have been organized or funded by USAID.
• United States Agency for International Development (USAID) Development Data Library

  The Development Data Library (DDL) is a searchable repository for machine-readable research data produced or funded by USAID on topics related to human rights, econmic growth, public health, educational services, humanitarian assistance, international security, and more.
• World Bank World Development Indicators

  The World Development Indicators is a compilation of relevant, high-quality, and internationally comparable statistics about global development and the fight against poverty. The database contains 1,400 time series indicators for 217 economies over the span of up to 50 years, on topics relevant to poverty, health, economy, environment, and governance.

• Arts and Humanities Citation Index (Web of Science)

  Index of 1,600 arts and humanities journals that allows searching for articles that cite a known author or work.
• Bibliography of Asian Studies

  Contains citations to western-language periodical articles and books published pertaining to East, Southeast, and South Asia.
• Computerized Index to Philippine Periodicals

  Indexes articles in approximately 100 Philippine journals, magazines and newspapers.
  

• Journal Index Thammasat University Libraries

  Index to major Thai journals at Thammasat University Libraries. Can be searched in both Thai and English.
• Journal of Indonesian Social Sciences and Humanities

  Full text articles on Indonesia published by KITLV (Royal Netherlands Institute of Southeast Asian and Caribbean Studies), LIPI and Yayasan Obor.
• Southeast Asia Serials Index

  A joint project by the Australian National University and the Royal Institute of Linguistices and Anthropology (KITLV). This database indexes academic journals primarily on Indonesia including vernacular language journals. Cover all areas of the social sciences and humanities. Entries include subject keywords and bibliographic details. There is a full list of titles indexed.
• Theses and Journal Index Chulalongkorn University

  Contain full range of indexes on major Thai journals. Also provides abstracts of theses produced by Chulalongkorn University students.