SEALG Annual Meeting 2005, Exeter

The 2005 SEALG Annual Meeting took place in Exeter, April 29th – 30th, 2005,
in association with the 22nd ASEASUK Conference, which was organized by the University of Exeter.

Attendants at the SEALG meeting:

Nicholas Martland, School of Oriental and African Studies, London, UK
Annabel Teh Gallop, The British Library, London, UK
San San May, The British Library, London, UK
Jana Raendchen, The British Library, London, UK
Stefan Seeger, Institute of the Study of the Muslim Civilisations, London, UK
Margaret Nicholson, University of Hull, UK
Xiyi Huang, University of Leeds, UK
Annie Troedsson, University of Lund, Sweden
Sergej Kukushkin, Russian State Library, Moscow, Russia
Per Hansen, Nordic Institute of Asian Studies, Copenhagen, Denmark

Apologized:

Christina Grune, Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin, Germany
Lieu Cao Thi, Musee Guimet, Paris, France
Rosemary Robson, University of Leiden, Netherlands
Rahadi Karni, Netherlands
Geoffrey Roper Institute of the Study of the Muslim Civilisations, London, UK
Kathryn Anderson Library of Congress, Washington, USA

The following issues were discussed:

1) Each attendant gave a short introduction of his/her institution and the main focus of his/her work.

2) Margaret Nicholson as Treasurer of the SEALG presented the Financial report for the year 2004.

3) Nicholas Martland resigned as chairman of the the SEALG. Jana Raendchen was nominated new chairwoman.

4) Discussion of the possibility of having a SEALG Mailing List or an E-Newsletter to improve communication and exchange of information between SEALG members.

5) Discussion of the possibility of shared access to SEA related databases between SEALG member institutions.

6) Presentation of institutional news:

The British Library now has a complete team of four staff members in the Southeast Asia section (Curators of Malay/Indonesian, Burmese, Thai, and Vietnamese collections).

The Southeast Asia Department at the University of Hull has been moved to the University of Leeds, but the SEA collection remains in Hull for now. The library of the University of Leeds is open minded for improvement and trying to establish good conditions to co-operate with the SEA collection at Hull.

The Institute of the Study of the Muslim Civilisations is a new organisation in London, established by the Aga Khan University (Karachi) in 2002. The library holds ca. 5000 titles and aims to acquire materials which are hardly available in other institutions in London covering Muslim civilisations.

The Nordic Institute of Asian Studies is now an independent research institute funded by the Copenhagen Business School, The University of Copenhagen and the Nordic Council of Ministers.

The University of Lund has to deal with financial cuts in the Asia Department. At the moment only Japanese and Chinese teaching is possible under these circumstances. The library, however, got a large donation on South Asia.

Due to moving into new buildings, at the Russian State Library about 50% of the SEA collection is available to readers at the moment. Efforts are made to do cataloguing in Aleph, but due to technical problems no decision about online cataloguing has been made yet.

Construction works are going on at the School of Oriental and African Studies, therefore there are also noise disturbances at the library. The library has a healthy budget, but the lack of storage space is becoming a pressurizing issue.

7) The next SEALG annual meeting was proposed to take place in Napoli, Italy, in spring or early summer 2006.