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The following libraries are recommended for South Asia:
The British Library, through the combination of the collecting traditions of the old British Museum Library and the India Office Library and Records (IOLR), possesses the finest single resource for Asian, and particularly South Asian, studies universally.
The India Office Records are the documentary archives of the administration in London of the pre-1947 Empire of India government. They comprise the archives of the East India Company (1600-1858); Board of Control or Board of Control Commissioners for the Affairs of India (1784-1858); the India Office (1858-1947) and Burma Office (1937-1948); and of a number of related British agencies overseas.
The Royal Asiatic Society (est. 1823) exists to encourage and facilitate Asian Studies and globally acknowledged as Great Britain's most distinguished learned society in the field. The Library is primarily for the use of the members of the Society, both Fellows and Library Associates. Other readers may be admitted, by prior appointment, for a limited period of time.
The Indian Institute Library (est. 1886) is a dependent library of the Bodleian focusing on the history and culture of South Asia, Tibet and the Himalayas. The collection covers the history and culture of the subcontinent from medieval times to the present day. The collection contains books in and on most post-classical Indic languages, although holdings are much less substantial than those for Sanskrit, Prakrits and Pali.
The history of medicine in Asian cultures, in both primary and secondary sources, forms the core of the collection but, since medical history cannot be studied in isolation from the cultures in which it developed, almost every area of human endeavour is represented. Several catalogues of the major language collections have been published and catalogues of the smaller Oriental collections appear in appropriate learned journals.
The Library of the Faculty of Oriental Studies has grown, from very modest beginnings in the early years of the twentieth century, to what is now a collection of over 50,000 volumes about the language, literature and culture of the countries stretching across Asia from Turkey to Japan.
The Library holds some 22,500 monographs on South and Southeast Asia, many of which are not available elsewhere in Cambridge. The subject coverage of the Centre's collection is broadly the humanities and the social sciences.
The library of the Ancient India and Iran Trust (est. 1979) is a unique independent resource for research in the fields of the cultural heritage of ancient India, Iran and Central Asia and the history and philology of Indo-Iranian languages. The collection's origins can be traced to the personal library of Professor Sir Harold Bailey (1899-1996), the first Parsee Community Lecturer at SOAS (1929-36), and subsequently Professor of Sanskrit, Cambridge (1936-67).
From its inception in 1868, the organisation successively known as the Colonial Society, Royal Colonial Institute, Royal Empire Society and finally the Royal Commonwealth Society, amassed a library on the British Empire, the Commonwealth and member countries including an impressive range of books, pamphlets, periodicals, official publications, manuscripts and photographs. The collection now consists of approximately 300,000 printed items and over 70,000 photographs, including material on South Asia. The Royal Commonwealth Society Library is now housed in Cambridge University Library.
Located on the 6th floor of the University of London's Senate House, an extensive research collection for those working on the Commonwealth and its member states, including South Asia. Particularly strong for history, politics, international relations, development, economics, education and social issues.