Southeast Asian Studies Collection Guide: Related Local & Regional Collections

The Seattle Public Library and the King County Library System have collections of contemporary popular literature from the region to serve local heritage communities, particularly in Vietnamese.

The Libraries actively participates in regional and national cooperative collection development efforts which enhance the range of resources available to UW students, faculty, and staff while conserving precious funds for local acquisitions.   These include:

• Center for Research Libraries (CRL): This organization acquires research material in print, microform, and electronic formats on behalf of its members, including foreign dissertations, newspaper archives, and other important but infrequently used resources.  In addition, the UW Libraries participates in several initiatives of CRL's Global Resources Program  that focus on international scholarly resources, such as news, government publications, and  technical reports. CRL coordinates the Southeast Asia Microform Project (SEAM) , an international collaboration with other Southeast Asia collections that assists in the preservation of endangered research materials in the Southeast Asia region.
• Greater Western Library Alliance (GWLA):
• Orbis Cascade Alliance. Collaboration among members of this regional consortium expands the print resources available to UW scholars through Summit, the Alliance joint catalog. The Orbis Cascade e-book program allows UW patrons to view electronic books that are accessible to and jointly owned by all member libraries.
• SeaWest The UW Libraries has been the lead institution for the SeaWest Consortium.  Originating in a scholarly collaboration for SE Asian Studies between the Universities of Oregon, British Columbia and UW in 1987, the library consortium of the Northwest Regional Consortium for Southeast Asian Studies was transformed into the SeaWest Consortium in 1998, with the inclusion of the University of Hawaii at Manoa,  UC Berkeley, and UCLA.   Under the original NWRCSEAS library agreement, the University of Oregon had responsibility for the Philippines.  Although both institutional priorities have changed, UO remains the strongest contributing library to SE Asian resources within the Orbis Cascade Alliance.

• Demand Purchase Program.  For purchase of foreign dissertations, newspaper issues, and published archives.  Requests are forwarded from the Libraries' Interlibrary Loan office.

• Scholar's Access Program.  For limited-term access to a database, newspaper, or other electronic resource.  Requests should be made through your subject librarian. 

As members of the Western Regional Storage Trust (WEST) and the Greater Western Library Alliance (GWLA), the UW Libraries collaborates with other research libraries to ensure long-term access to microform and print serials whether or not a digital surrogate exists.  Shared responsibility for maintaining retrospective print holdings enables the Libraries to better manage its own collections space.