The Penn Libraries' Southeast Asia-related collection development program is forward-looking through necessity. There has been sufficient interest in Southeast Asia at the classroom level that the Libraries has been consistent in acquiring contemporary scholarship on the region in a wide range of disciplines through our approval plans.
The retrospective collection is relatively strong for Southeast Asia in the areas of religion, history, political science, anthropology, archaeology, linguistics and art history.
Major primary research collections, on microform or in print, concerning Southeast Asia include the complete Human Relations Area Files and campuswide online access to eHRAF, 19th- and 20th-century British parliamentary papers, state papers, confidential papers, and Public Record Office files.
Electronic media materials are a recent addition to the collection. Music sound recordings, held in the Ormandy Listening Center, are very selectively acquired. Documentaries, usually by request, are acquired and likewise are important films to support the Cinema and Media Studies program.
New areas for development will be public health, international and non-governmental organization publications, and materials relating to the social, political, and economic conditions of the region.
Bibliographic access to the collection is provided through Franklin, the Penn Libraries' online catalog.
Journal literature bibliography for Southeast Asian studies is well served, especially by the Bibliography of Asian Studies.
The interdisciplinary nature of Penn's Southeast Asian studies program may require readers to use a large number of subject-specific online bibliographic and full-text databases. Among the licensed databases offered are Anthropological Literature, CAB Abstracts, DataStream, FRANCIS, Historical Abstracts, Index to World Legal Periodicals, International Bibliography of the Social Sciences, ISI Web of Science, LEXIS-NEXIS Academic Universe, LLBA, Medline, MLA International Bibliography, PAIS, ProQuest Dissertations Online, and World News Connection and the important Foreign Broadcast Information Service (FBIS).