South East Asian Studies

About the Collection

The South East Asia section includes publications on South East Asia as a whole (including material on ASEAN, APEC, the Pacific Rim and the Asia-Pacific region) and the individual countries - Brunei, Burma (Myanmar), Cambodia, East Timor, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam.

The main strengths of the South East Asia collection are in languages, linguistics, literatures, anthropology, ethnic minorities, religion, economics, finance, statistics, development issues, politics, law, human rights, arts, archaeology, history, biography, film, press and media studies.

The main collection of print books on South East Asia is on Level A and these can be found under class-marks G, H or I; Books on South East Asian art and archaeology are on Level D, under class-marks beginning with FN; Books on South East Asian laws are on Level D, under the class-marks beginning with A345.9. The South East Asia reference collection contains publications on bibliographies, dictionaries, statistical reports and yearbooks on South East Asian languages and resources.

Part of the South East Asia section also includes collections of the Pacific Islands, covering the areas of the Pacific Ocean (including Papua New Guinea, Australia and New Zealand). The main emphasis of these Pacific Islands collections is on language, linguistics and anthropology. The print materials are under class-marks HM-HZ for English and Western languages & IE-IZ for the vernacular languages.

The Library has an extensive collection of journals in both print and electronic format. Check the Library catalogue and eJournal search.

Special collections

• Burma Campaign Memorial Library – The Burma Campaign Memorial Library (BCML) is a comprehensive collection of memoirs, histories, biographies, autobiographies, diaries, personal narratives, essays, letters,
  fiction and poetry about the war in Burma from 1942 to 1945. The BCML collection also contains historical information on Burma’s neighbours, such as the Indian National Army, the Gurkhas, China-Burma-India Theatre and the Burma Road. The physical collection of BCML is held on Level F in the Library.
• Early Malay Publications - SOAS Library has a treasure of early Malay publications in Arabic script (known as Jawi script); most of them dated 19th century and some early 20th century. These were originally on the open shelves in the main library but later transferred to the rare book collections.