Southeast Asia

Indonesia

The Indonesian collection is the oldest and largest of the Asian collections at Monash. It is also one of the most comprehensive in Australia and is the only research level Indonesian collection in Victoria. It holds some 25,000 books and over 1,500 journal and newspaper titles and includes material in Bahasa Indonesia, regional Indonesian languages, Dutch and English.

Areas of current collecting include history, politics, economics, society, culture, language, literature and music. Much older material is held on microfiche or microfilm, including Indonesian Monographs 1945-1968, which contains over 7000 books. There are also many music recordings.

Important special collections include a large pamphlet collection, the Balai Pustaka collection of early Indonesian vernacular literature, and archival material from the Dutch colonial period.

Other Southeast Asian collections

Collections in local languages and English are available for the study of Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand, Burma, Cambodia, Vietnam and East Timor. They include much colonial-era archival material and periodicals, mainly on microfilm. Amongst the special collections are the David Chandler collection on Pol Pot-era Cambodia, a collection of 1950s Malay popular and religious literature in Jawi script, a collection of material on the Burmese democracy movement, and the Southeast Asia pamphlet collection.

Accessing the Southeast Asian collection

See the Indonesian studies subject guide for more detailed information about resources, including relevant databases, microforms, multimedia materials, journals, online resources, online tutorials, staff members and more. To find specific materials search the library catalogue. For general searching use the Search “keyword anywhere” option and enter the name of the country plus other topic words that describe what you want. You can use the “Limit” function to limit your search results to materials in Indonesian, Malay, Thai, Vietnamese or other Asian languages. Search the Asian studies databases to find journal articles, etc.

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