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 UCB-UCLA
Consortium National Resource Center for Southeast Asia
In 2000, the Center for Southeast Asia Studies joined with the
Center for Southeast
Asia Studies at University of California, Los Angeles as a consortium
to become a new U.S Department of Education Title VI National Resource
Center for Southeast Asian Studies. As a joint center, UCLA and
UC Berkeley form one of only seven Title VI National Resource Centers
for Southeast Asia in the U.S., and the only such center in California.
The establishment of this consortium has energized Southeast Asian
Studies on both campuses, which, as part of the integrated University
of California system, enrolls over 15,000 students of Southeast
Asian heritage on ten campuses throughout the state. The consortium
currently helps students and scholars at each campus to work together
on programs (conferences, workshops, and speaker series), stimulates
the development of campus resources devoted to the field (in the
area of library acquisitions, e.g.) and promotes improvements in
the quality and accessibility of language instruction through shared
projects of professional development.
Consortium activities of particular impact include the Distinguished
Visitor from Southeast Asia program that brings prominent academics
and public intellectuals from Southeast Asia to both campuses during
the spring semester. Past Distinguished Visitors from Southeast
Asia include Chandra Muzaffar (2001), Nurcholish Madjid (2002),
Juree Vichit-Vadakan (2003), Pham Thi Hoai (2004), and Roland Tolentino
(2006).
One particular aspect supporting Southeast Asian Studies at UC
Berkeley and at UCLA is the extensive and integrated UC library
system. UC Berkeley’s library itself holds one of the strongest
Southeast Asian collections in the country. The South/Southeast
Asian Library (S/SEAL) is a designated reference and bibliographical
center with a reading room in 120 Doe Library. S/SEAL maintains
a reference collection of over 3,500 items including national, general
and specialized bibliographies, indexes, printed library catalogs,
dictionaries, and directories, plus non-circulating monographs of
current interest, high-use newspapers, and journals.
The Berkeley library’s special collections on Southeast Asia
include the Barrows collection on the Philippines; the Briggs collection
on Indonesia, Indochina, and the Malay Peninsula; and the McFarland
archive on Thailand and Cambodia. The library also holds invaluable
materials on the Philippines collected by R. F. Barton, Alfred Kroeber,
and Bernard Moses in the first half of the twentieth century.
Other special interest holdings are the John Spragens Collection
and the Beatrice and William Eisman Collection. The Spragens collection
contains fiction, poetry and memoirs from North and South Vietnam.
Beatrice and William Eisman were the co-founders of the US/Vietnam
Friendship Association, and their collection includes photographs
and print materials on the Vietnam War and on U.S. anti-war groups.
UCLA’s
library has been building its collection of Southeast Asian
materials in both English and vernacular languages since 1999. By
2006, Southeast Asian holdings in print and non-print materials
surpassed 120,000 titles.
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