Asian and African Studies

• Institution Details
• Description of Collections
• Collections held in Asian and African Studies
• Subjects and Material Types
• Management Information
• Catalogue Information
• Collection Printed Catalogues

Institution Details

Asian and African Studies

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Location in the UK

London & South East

Description of Collections

Scope

Asian and African Studies (A&AS), formerly known as latterly as Asia, Pacific and Africa Collections (APAC) and previously as Oriental and India Office Collections (OIOC), is the focus within the British Library for materials relating to all the cultures of Asia, Islamic North Africa, the Horn of Africa, and the Caucasus.

History & development

A&AS (then OIOC) was formed in 1991 by the amalgamation of two departments: Oriental Collections (which derived from the former British Museum Library which opened to the public in 1759) and the India Office Library & Records (which joined the British Library only in 1982 having opened as a research library in 1801).

User focus

A&AS supports research by academics in the UK and world-wide in all the humanities and social sciences relating to Asia and North Africa, but is particularly outstanding for the study of history, religions, linguistics and literatures, and art history.

Collections held in Asian and African Studies

• Arabic Collection
• Armenian Collection
• Assamese Collection
• Bengali Collection
• Burmese Collection
• Cambodian Collection
• Chinese collections
• Classical South Asia
• Coptic Collection
• Curzon Collection
• Ethiopic Collection
• European Printed Books
• Georgian Collection.
• Gujarati Collection
• Hebrew Collection
• Hindi Collection
• Hinduism
• Hodgson Collection
• India Office Company Drawings Collection
• India Office Indian Miniatures Collection
• India Office Natural History Drawings Collection
• India Office Paintings Sculpture and Works of Art Collection
• India Office Photographs Collection
• India Office Popular Paintings Collection
• India Office Prints Collection
• India Office Prints Drawings and Photographs Collection
• India Office Private Papers
• India Office Records
• India Office Records Map Collections
• India Office Records Official Publications
• India Office Western Drawings Collection
• Indonesian Collection
• Iranian Language collections (excluding Persian)
• Islam
• Japanese Collection
• Kannada Collection
• Kashmiri Collection
• Korean collection
• Lao Collection
• Malay and Malaysian Collection
• Malayalam Collection
• Mandalay Collection
• Marathi Collection
• Murray Collection
• Nepali and Newari Collections
• Oriya Collection
• Panjabi Collection (Gurmukhi and Persian script)
• Persian Collections
• Phayre Collection
• Philippine Collection
• Sindhi Collection
• Singapore Collection
• Syriac Collection
• Tamil Collection
• Telugu Collection
• Thai Collection
• Tibetan Collection
• Turkish and Turkic languages
• Urdu Collection
• Vietnamese Collection
• Yiddish collection

Subjects and Material Types

Regions

Central Asia and the Caucasus, East Asia, Near & Middle East and North Africa, South Asia, South East Asia.

Countries

Afghanistan, Algeria, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Bahrain, Bangladesh, Bhutan, Brunei, Burma, Cambodia, China, Cyprus, East Timor, Egypt, Ethiopia, Georgia, Hong Kong, India, Indonesia, Iran, Iraq, Israel, Jordan, Kazakhstan, Kuwait, Kyrgyzstan, Laos, Lebanon, Libya, Malaysia, Maldives, Morocco, Nepal, North Korea, Oman, Pakistan, Qatar, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, South Korea, Sri Lanka, Sudan, Syria, Tajikistan, Thailand, The Philippines, Tibet, Tunisia, Turkey, Turkmenistan, United Arab Emirates, Uzbekistan, Vietnam, Yemen.

Languages of material

Achinese, Altaic (Other), Amharic, Arabic, Aramaic, Armenian, Assamese, Avestan, Azerbaijani, Balinese, Baluchi, Bashkir, Batak (Indonesia), Bengali, Buginese, Burmese, Chagatai, Chinese, Chuvash, Coptic, Danish, Dayak, Dutch, English, Finnish, French, Gayo, Geez, Georgian, German, Gorontalo, Gujarati, Hebrew, Hindi, Hungarian, Iloko, Indonesian, Italian, Japanese, Javanese, Judeo-Arabic, Judeo-Persian, Kachin, Kannada, Kara-Kalpak, Karen, Kashmiri, Kawi, Kazakh, Khotanese, Kirghiz, Korean, Kurdish, Ladino, Lao, Madurese, Makasar, Malay, Malayalam, Marathi, Minangkabau, Miscellaneous languages, Mon-Khmer (Other), Nepali, Newari, Nias, Norwegian, Oriya, Ossetian; Ossetic, Pahlavi, Pali, Panjabi, Persian, Philippine (Other), Polish, Portuguese, Prakrit languages, Pushto, Russian, Samaritan Aramaic, Sanskrit, Sasak, Shan, Sinhalese, Sogdian, Spanish, Sundanese, Swedish, Syriac, Tagalog, Tajik, Tamil, Tatar, Telugu, Thai, Tibetan, Turkish, Turkish, Ottoman (1500-1928), Turkmen, Tuvinian, Uighur, Urdu, Uzbek, Vietnamese, Yiddish.

Subjects

Agriculture, Anthropology, Archaeology, Arts, Communication and media, Development, Economics, Education, Environmental sciences, Geography, History, Human rights, Industries, International relations, Language, Law, Literature, Medicine, Music, Philosophy, Politics and government, Recreation, Religion, Science and technology, Sociology, Travel, Women.

Languages as linguistic focus

Amharic, Armenian, Coptic, Geez, Georgian, Korean, Pali, Persian, Prakrit languages, Sanskrit, Syriac, Tajik, Yiddish.

Material types

Archival materials (includes non-published & mixed material), Audio materials (includes cassettes & CDs), Books, Computer files (includes CD-ROMs & other electronic material), Manuscripts, Maps (includes all types of cartographic material), Music (only includes printed & manuscript music), Newspapers (includes microfilm editions), Official publications, Public records, Serials, Theses, Visual materials (includes photographs, prints, drawings, videos & films).

Management Information

Annual intake

13,000 monographs, 13,000 serial parts, 9,500 newspaper parts, 2,400 microforms, 200 manuscript/private papers items, 100 prints and drawings, 500 photographs, plus a few maps and CD-ROMs

Content date range

1200 BC to present

Co-operative agreements

• Agreement with the School of Oriental and African Studies Library, University of London (regarding shared access arrangements, collaborative collection development, etc.)

Collection policy

Retention policy

In principle all material is retained indefinitely. The only exceptions to this are the disposal of some hard-copy Asian newspaper holdings after microfilming and occasional duplicate printed books.

Catalogue Information

Catalogue

There is no 'single gateway' to APAC collections, either on the Web or in the British Library's reading rooms. The majority of APAC's modern printed accessions (except for certain Asian languages) are available via the Library's OPAC, but records for the historic printed collections very largely await retrospective conversion (being still to be found in hard-copy printed catalogues, card catalogues and on microfilk or microfiche). The India Office Records class lists are available in the APAC Reading Room in hard-copy (some have been published, but most not). Recently collection-level records have been contributed to the Access to Archives (A2A) project led by the Public Record Office. Catalogues of European Manuscripts, and Prints, Drawings & Photographs are soon to be mounted on the Library's OPAC. For further details see under the records for APAC's individual collections.

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Catalogue transliteration

The Library of Congress transliteration schemes are used for the majority of Asian languages. For further details and the exceptions see under the records for APAC's individual collections

Catalogue scripts

Hebrew script is available on the Library's OPAC. Chinese and Japanese characters are used in the Allegro-C database.

Collection printed catalogues

For details see under the records for APAC's individual collections

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