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The Southeast Asia Microform Project (SEAM) is a cooperative
endeavor established to provide subscribing institutions with
better coverage of research materials related to the study
of Southeast Asia. SEAM will film or acquire films of such
research materials and make them readily available to subscribers
to the project.
From an initial focus on cost-effective sharing of resources
in microformat, SEAM has become, with cooperating institutions
and foundations, a major sponsor of efforts to preserve
and provide access to rare or unique resources from Southeast
Asia. Following deliberations at an international conference
in Indonesia in 1969, SEAM was established in 1970 through
the collaboration of the Committee
on Research Materials on Southeast Asia (CORMOSEA),
a component committee of the Southeast Asia Council of the
Association for Asian
Studies, and the Center for Research Libraries (CRL)
and is administered by CRL. The member libraries fund SEAM
projects and acquisitions through an annual membership fee;
representatives of member institutions meet annually to
discuss projects and to elect a chair and executive committee
(consisting of representatives from three participating
institutions and a faculty member chosen by CORMOSEA). Projects
and purchases are approved by a mail ballot of the membership.
SEAM's rich holdings include historic newspaper sets and
manuscript collections filmed in Southeast Asia. In recent
years these strengths have been enhanced by donations from
member libraries which received funding in the late 1980s
from the Henry Luce Foundation
for the preservation of scarce or endangered materials
in the recipient collections. SEAM has cooperated with the
Ford Foundation
in sponsoring several significant manuscript projects in
Indonesia, including the manuscript collections in the Palace
and the Sonobuduyo Museum in Yogyakarta, the Faculty of
Letter of the University of Indonesia, and the National
Library of Indonesia as well as projects to film scattered
manuscript collections in West Java (Sunda) and in South
Sulawesi. For most of these projects, print catalogs have
been prepared and distributed to SEAM member institutions
and CRL. Other collaborators in these projects include the
École Française d'Extrême Orient (EFEO)
and the National Library and National Archives of Indonesia.
In these projects, SEAM receives a use copy of film and
the master negative is deposited with the National Library
or the National Archives of Indonesia.
As the collaborative projects with the Ford Foundation
in Indonesia are being completed, CRL, on behalf of SEAM,
received a grant from the Henry
Luce Foundation for an initiative in Vietnam which has
established a preservation microfilming facility at the
National Library in Ha Noi. The project will result in the
filming of early twentieth century vernacular sources in
the romanized script, and archival sources in Vietnamese
and Chinese scripts.
SEAM holdings include more than 300 historic newspapers
from every country in the region, in national, minority,
and English or other colonial languages, similar numbers
of historic journals and government serials and thousands
of historic manuscripts. The materials are available for
loan to member libraries without restriction; non member
libraries may have limited access to SEAM materials.
For questions about SEAM, please contact:
James Simon
Director of International Resources
Center for Research Libraries
6050 S. Kenwood
Chicago, IL 60637
USA
(tel) 773 955-4545 ext. 324
(fax) 773 955-4339
email: simon at crl.edu
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