LibGuides: Southeast Asian Studies: Home

Donn V. Hart Southeast Asia Collection, University Libraries, Northern Illinois University

Southeast Asia Collection Office Hours

Monday - Friday: 9:00AM - 4:00PM

Room 497, 496

To search for materials in the Southeast Asia Collection, please use the online catalog of NIU University Libraries

The Donn V. Hart Southeast Asia Collection is an open-stack collection located on the fourth floor of the university’s main library, the Founders Memorial Library. Materials from the Southeast Asia collection can be checked out when the main library is open, except reference materials, periodicals (journals, newspapers, magazines), and special items.

For reference assistance, patrons can visit the collection's offices in rooms 496 or 497 during operating hours. Additionally, users may contact the curator, Hao Phan, hphan@niu.edu, 815-753-1809, for assistance with library resources.

Located within the collection is the Southeast Asia Reading Room, room 495, which serves as a dedicated space for NIU faculty, students, and visiting scholars conducting research utilizing materials from the collection. Access to the reading room follows the collection's office hours and operates on a first-come, first-served basis. If you need to reserve the reading room in advance, please reach out to the collection's library assistant, Joanna Kulma, jkulma@niu.edu, 815-753-1809.

This page lists the top recommended databases for SOUTHEAST ASIA. A database is a searchable collection of articles, books, and other resources you usually can’t find on Google.

The Southeast Asia Digital Library (SEADL)

Southeast Asia Digital Library
The Southeast Asia Digital Library (SEADL) contains hundreds of thousands of digital copies of research materials from Southeast Asia, freely accessible on the internet. Materials include manuscripts, photos, videos, and books. Supported by grants from the U.S. Department of Education and the Henry Luce Foundation, this is a collaborative project between the Southeast Asia collections in the United States and libraries and institutions in Southeast Asia. Established in 2005, SEADL is based at Northern Illinois University.

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Southeast Asian Studies Institutions

About the Donn V. Hart Southeast Asia Collection at Northern Illinois University

The Donn V. Hart Southeast Asia Collection is considered one of the major Southeast Asia library collections in the United State and the only one of its kind in Illinois. The collection is used not only by faculty and students at Northern Illinois University (NIU) but also by scholars elsewhere in the country and the world. In 1963, an interdisciplinary Southeast Asian Studies program was established at NIU. In the following year, the Center for Southeast Asian Studies was founded to coordinate teaching, research and related activities for Southeast Asian Studies. The Southeast Asia library collection was organized at the same time to meet the increasing study and instructional needs of students and faculty. First housed in Swen Parson Hall, in 1977 the collection was moved to the Founders Memorial Library. In 1985, the collection was named the Donn V. Hart Southeast Asia Collection in honor of Professor Hart, an anthropologist specializing in Philippine Studies who was director of the Center for Southeast Asian Studies at NIU from 1971 to 1981. The Donn V. Hart Southeast Asia Collection today holds an extensive collection of approximately 170,000 volumes of library materials pertaining to the eleven Southeast Asian countries: Brunei, Cambodia, East Timor, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar (Burma), Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, and Vietnam. Materials of various formats – books, periodicals, microform, audiovisual records, maps, archival collections, and online sources - are in English and Southeast Asian languages. The collection is particularly strong on Indonesia, Thailand, Philippines, Malaysia, and Myanmar. Highlighted materials within the collection include a sizable collection of ancient Burmese manuscripts (palm-leaf, paper, kamavaca), Thai manuscripts (palm-leaf), and about 50 Asia maps produced between 1500s and 1700s.

Materials held in the Donn V. Hart Collection can be located by searching on the online catalog of the NIU University Libraries. Miscellaneous publications not suitable for shelving - such as single issues of periodicals, newspaper clippings, copies of articles - are filed and stored in the office of the Southeast Asia Collection, room 496. A list of these "vertical files" is available online. Except reference, rare materials, and periodicals, all materials in the Donn V. Hart Southeast Asia Collection are available for check out. Users at other institutions may also borrow materials from the collection through interlibrary loan.

Additional resources include:

Southeast Asia Digital Library
contains hundreds of thousands of digital copies of research materials from Southeast Asia, freely accessible on the internet. Materials include manuscripts, photos, videos, and books.
The Burma Art Collection
Center for Burma Studies
Center for Southeast Asian Studies at NIU

Top SEA Databases

Bibliography of Asian Studies (EBSCO)
The bibliography of Asian Studies contains over 410,000 records on all fields of study (especially the social sciences and the humanities) relating to East, South and Southeast Asia published worldwide since 1971. Up to 1991, citations to western-language periodical articles, individual monographs, chapters in edited volumes, anthologies, memorial works and conference proceedings. A listing of the 100 most important periodicals in Asian studies is provided. Browsing is available by region, country, subject, and journal title. Abstracts Only.
ProQuest Digital Dissertations and Theses @ Northern Illinois University
ProQuest Digital Dissertations and Theses @ Northern Illinois University--The database represents a subset of Dissertation Abstracts focused exclusively on dissertations and theses penned at Northern Illinois University. Although not complete, full-text is available for the bulk of the materials submitted to the NIU Graduate College.
Academic search complete
Indexing and abstracts for over 10,000 publications, including monographs, reports, conference proceedings,and full-text access to over 5,000 journals. (Database for NIU users only)
JSTOR
An online, full-text archive of complete backfiles of scholarly periodical literature since 1872. Journals are intended to be archival, not current; most are 2-5 years behind the current issues, depending on the journal.
Alexander Street Streaming Video (Academic Video Online)
Alexander Street Streaming Video - this is an alternative site for Academic Video Online which features a single, fully integrated platform, offering access to tens of thousands of full-length streaming video titles. Virtually every video in the collection is fully transcribed in addition to being indexed for subjects, people, places, release date, language, publisher, and video type.

More SEA Databases

American Foreign Relations since 1600--The SHAFR Guide Online
The SHAFR Guide Online: An Annotated Bibliography of U.S. Foreign Relations since 1600 is a near-comprehensive, 2.1 million-word online annotated bibliography of historical work covering the entire span of U.S. foreign relations. (No full text).
Anthropology Research Sources
Digital Library of Lao Manuscripts (DLLM)
13,000 images of texts from Laos
Political Science
Project Muse
This database provides full text, full image of nearly 100 scholarly journals from Johns Hopkins Press and other scholarly publishers. Provides searching of full text
Researching Indochina: Archives in Việt Nam and Cambodia
An outline of library and archival resources for French Indochina (UW)
Women's and Gender Studies

Northern Illinois University Libraries

Hao Phan

he/him

Email Me

Subjects: Southeast Asian Studies

Contact

Hao Phan
Southeast Asia Curator
Email: hphan@niu.edu
Phone: 815-753-1809

Joanna Kulma
Southeast Asia Library Specialist
Email: jkulma@niu.edu
Phone: 815-753-1819

For mailing:

Southeast Asia Collection
University Libraries, NIU
1425 W Lincoln Hwy
DeKalb, IL 60115-2828
U.S.A.