Annual Review

ISEAS Library Annual Review FY 2017

I COLLECTION BUILDING

Acquisition of Books & Serials

In FY17/18, the Library purchased 1,738 new publications, about 9% less than the previous financial year.  Our international exchange partners contributed a further 143 books and 68 serial titles to the collection, a decrease of 15% year-on-year.  The Library currently subscribes to 16 international newspapers, 14 published in the Southeast Asian region. The number of hardcopy newspapers was further reduced to 12 as subscription costs continue to rise and more newspapers are now available for online access. Through subscription to six electronic databases, namely Bibliography of Asian Studies, JSTOR, Project Muse, ProQuest, Stratfor Global Intelligence Brief, and Economist Intelligence Unit, our users have access to 9,600 e-journal and e-newspaper titles.

Private Papers Collection

Audio-Visual Collection

The Library archived approximately 231 hours of audio and video recordings of 99 seminars, conferences, workshops, and symposiums organised by the Institute.

II COLLECTION MANAGEMENT

The Library has 250,277 titles in its print collection, of which those published in vernacular languages of the region made up 52% as shown in Figure 1.

III LIBRARY AUTOMATION 

SEALion Online Catalogue

The SEALion registered an 86% increase in search sessions year-on-year. Four geographical regions contributed to almost 99% of our users: Southeast Asia, Europe, the Americas and East Asia. Within the Southeast Asia region, Malaysia, Indonesia and Thailand were the top three usage groups. Table 1 has the breakdown.

Table 1: Virtual User Sessions on SEALion Online Catalogue

SealionPLUS for Online Access to Digitised Contents

Whilst SEALion is a platform for searching published books and journals available in the Library for loans, SealionPLUS allows registered users to search and access digitised materials from the Library’s non-print collections: Private Papers, photographs, audio visual recordings of seminar proceedings, oral history interviews and the Library’s daily selection of news articles from online sources. Like SEALion, users of SealionPLUS mainly came from the Southeast Asian region (62%). The other users that showed a strong presence came from Europe and North America (20%) and East/South Asia (16%).  Table 2 below shows the usage of digitised contents by media types:

 Table 2: Usage of digitised contents on SealionPLUS

¹The number of sessions during which the specified page was viewed at least once (this excludes the scenario where a user keeps refreshing the same page within the same period of time).

²This consists of the Ding Choo Ming Pantun Collection and the ISEAS Library Selection of Journal Articles.

³The Theses & Dissertations collection was created in FY17/18 and contains theses deposited by various universities in the Southeast Asian region.

Collection Stocktake

Following two comprehensive stocktakes over the last five years, the Library performed a partial stocktake of 25% of RFID-tagged titles, amounting to 49,181 volumes. A total of 567 books were selected for minor repairs and close to 1,600 faded labels were replaced at the end of the exercise.

Info Alert Service

The Library released a total of 382 Info Alerts (totalling 24,404 selected articles). Since FY13/14, a total of 114,101 articles have been added to our newspapers/journals collection.  This financial year also saw 67 new subscribers added to the Info Alerts mailing lists, 85% of whom were external users.

IV LIBRARY VISITORS

The Library recorded a total visitorship of 5,739 this year, about 30% from external. Among them were students and delegates from the Centre for ASEAN Studies (Cambodia), Raja Ali Haji Maritime University (Indonesia) National Library of China, and Singapore Management University. The Library also received ISEAS Distinguished Fellow Her Royal Highness Princess Maha Chakri Sirindhorn of the Kingdom of Thailand.

The following are examples of feedback received from visitors about the Library and the Yusof Ishak Gallery.

• “I learned more about Singapore; it’s nice to know more about President Yusof Ishak.”
• “I belong to the fortunate generation who knew Encik Yusof Ishak, a beloved statesman, and Puan Noor Aishah. They made Singaporeans proud. Thank you for this exhibition, ISEAS.”
• “一个好的图书馆是进行求知研学的第一步。你们在如此优秀的图书馆，真的为你们骄傲，愿ISEAS越办越好。(A good library is the first step leading to knowledge and research. I am proud of you for having such an excellent library. I wish ISEAS every success in future endeavours.) ”
  

Highlights of Library visits. (Top left) Students from Centre for ASEAN Studies, Cambodia, 11 April 2017; (Top right) Students from Archaeology Field School, 14 August 2017;  (Bottom left) Visit by Her Royal Highness Princess Maha Chakri Sirindhorn of the Kingdom of Thailand, 21 January 2018; (Bottom right) ISEAS research officer showing foreign visitors the Exhibition at ISEAS Library, 20 March 2018.

V LIBRARY ADMINISTRATION

Work Experience Program (WEP)

The Library conducted its 5^th run of the Work Experience Programme with Raffles Girls’ School in November 2017. The students worked on various tasks including the processing of private papers and digitised microfilm images, collection stocktake, etc. Through the programme, students gained a better and deeper understanding of the professional role of librarians in supporting research and how the various departments of the Library interact internally to provide services to library users.

Highlights from RGS Programme 2017. (Top left) processing of private papers; (Top right) processing of digitised microfilm images; (Bottom left) collection stocktake using RFID device; (Bottom right) Group presentation sharing the work experience at ISEAS Library.

ISEAS Library Annual Review FY 2018

I COLLECTION BUILDING

Acquisition of Books & Serials

Private Papers Collection

Plan and context recording sheets associated with excavation in Ratchaburi Province, Thailand from Ian Glover Collection

Photographs Collection

Mary Jane Edleson Photograph Collection

This collection includes rare aerial photographs of Jakarta and its waterfront taken in the 1970s and 80s documenting the city’s changing skyline and landscape, as well as Ms Edleson’s collection of Indonesian topeng and aerial views of Bugis boats comprising the largest wind-powered fleet in the world at the time. Some of these images were captured by professional photographers and are of exhibition quality. Mary Jane Edleson has authored several works on Indonesia, including the well-researched Sekaring Jagad Ngayogyakarta Hadiningrat and Jakarta – a 5-volume work on the capital city. During her 24-year stay in Jakarta she built up a large photograph collection comprising close to 3,600 images, mostly 35mm colour slides and 2×2” unframed positives on Indonesia covering nearly three decades, documenting the changing landscape of the 1970s, 80s and 90s.

(Left)Ms Mary Jane Edleson explaining how she grouped her collection by subjects; (Right)One of the photographs from the Mary Jane Edleson collection: an aerial view of Jakarta in the 1980s.

Oral History Interviews

As part of the documentation for Myanmar’s modern political development and transition from military to civil government, the Library worked with ISEAS Visiting Fellow Mr Ye Htut to conduct oral history interview with ex-military officers and former political leaders in Myanmar over a period of two years. In this FY, a total of 88 hours of recorded interviews from 13 interviewees were archived, covering a wide range of subjects documenting both their personal life experiences and their involvement in various aspects of social and political development of post-war Myanmar. Ten of these interviews are available for immediate access by scholars and academics while the rest will be made available for access in 2022 and 2023.

Audio-Visual Collection

The Library archived approximately 138 hours of audio and video recordings of 48 seminars, conferences and workshops organised by the Institute.

Overseas Archives

To support researchers who need to work on primary resource, the Library acquired 76 digitised file records (approx. 8,607 pages) from the UK National Archives and National Library of Australia. Some of the records relate to the late Prof John Legge, ISEAS’ second Director from 1969-1970, and shows the early corporate history of the Institute.

II COLLECTION MANAGEMENT

The Library catalogued a total of 2,543 titles of newly arrived books and journals, bringing the total print collection to 251,916 titles, of which those published in languages of the region made up about half as shown in Figure 1. The Library’s non-print collection includes a further 4,254 titles on microfilm and 59,427 titles on microfiche.

Library Catalogue

In this FY, the Library produced three descriptive catalogues to its private collection.  Wong Ah Fook Collection: A Descriptive Catalogue of a Collection of Research Materials on an Immigration, Builder and Entrepreneur was published in conjunction with the 100^th anniversary of Wong Ah Fook.  The catalogue documents Wong’s business activities in Johor Bahru and Singapore, such as his construction of palaces and other significant government buildings that form the bulk of the heritage buildings in Johor Bahru today, with the most important of them was the construction of a palace, the Istana Besar, for Sultan Abu Bakar, as well as his visionary undertaking in the establishment of Kwong Yik Bank in 1913- the first Chinese bank in the turn of 20^th Century.

An enlarged catalogue of Toshio Egawa Collection, featuring four rounds of donations that the Library received from Mr Egawa progressively from 2010 to 2018. The collection includes rare and historical documents, handwritten research notes and reference books predominately focusing on the Meiji –Taisho Period. The catalogue is a gateway not only to the study of Japanese culture and history, but also to Mr Egawa’s deep insights into art, philosophy and history.

An e-catalogue of Tommy Koh Private Papers on the Law of the Sea was completed listing private papers relating to The Third United Nations Convention on the Law of The Sea (UNCLOS III). This collection consists of UN sessional reports, academic journal articles, research papers, seminar papers, newsprint articles and books on UNCLOS III and the Law of the Sea from the early 1970s to the 1990s.  There are also newsletters of the Southeast Asian Project on Ocean Law, Policy and Management (SEAPOL) and seminar papers presented at SEAPOL workshops from the 1980s to the 1990s available in this collection.

The e-catalogue of Wang Gungwu Collection that the Library launched in 2017 was also updated.

Collection Stocktake

The Library performed its second full stocktake of its RFID tagged collection, amounting to 221,838 volumes. From the process of stocktake, books that are not in good physical condition or have wear and tear, were discovered by staff. They are then taken out where faded labels are replaced or given to the Library conservator for minor repairs. 631 hours were spent performing minor repairs and replacement of faded labels for close to 850 items. A further 17 rare/antiquarian books were outsourced for major repairs and conservation treatment.

(Left) The Library conservator repairing the spine of a damaged book; (Right) Library staff conducting a stocktake of the general collection.

III COLLECTION ACCESS & OUTREACH

SEALion Online Catalogue

The SEALion registered a 30% increase in search sessions year-on-year. Four geographical regions contributed to almost 99% of our users: Southeast Asia, Europe, the Americas and East Asia. Within the Southeast Asia region (excluding Singapore), Indonsia, Philippines and Malaysia were the top three usage groups. Table 1 has the breakdown.

Table 1: Virtual User Sessions on SEALion Online Catalogue

SealionPLUS for Online Access to Digitised Contents

Whilst SEALion is a platform for searching published books and journals available in the Library for loans, SealionPLUS allows registered users to search and access digitised materials from the Library’s non-print collections: Private Papers, photographs, audio visual recordings of seminar proceedings, oral history interviews and the Library’s daily selection of news articles from online sources. Like SEALion, users of SealionPLUS mainly came from the Southeast Asian region (62%). The other users that showed a strong presence came from Europe and North America (20%) and East/South Asia (16%).  The top five usage of the collection in the database are as follows: Private Papers, Oral History Interviews, Photographs, News Articles & Commentaries which are the archived Daily News Alerts, followed by ISEAS publications and miscellaneous prints which includes research articles produced by ISEAS and extracted from other journal database.

Table 2: Usage of digitised contents on SealionPLUS

¹The number of sessions during which the specified page was viewed at least once (this excludes the scenario where a user keeps refreshing the same page within the same period of time).

²This consists of the Ding Choo Ming Pantun Collection and the ISEAS Library Selection of Journal Articles.

³The Theses & Dissertations collection was created in FY17/18 and contains theses deposited by various universities in the Southeast Asian region.

Library Membership

305 new members were registered in this fiscal year, majority came from ISEAS and other academic institutions as shown in Figure 2.

Figure 2 New Library Members by Affiliation

Research Enquiries

In this FY, Library processed 386 enquiries, which represents a slight increase of six per cent year-on-year. The majority of the enquiries came from ISEAS researchers, followed by foreign academic students and staff.

Collection Usage

For the year under review, there were 4,630 items consulted by users within the Library, representing a noticeable increase by 22 percent year on year, while the loan transactions of Library materials showed a slight reduction.

Info-Alert Service

The Library released a total of 357 Info Alerts (totalling 26,446 selected articles). Majority of the articles related to Malaysian (33.5%) and Indonesian affairs (11.2%) followed by ASEAN (8.0%) and Myanmar (7.9%).  In this FY, there were 93 new subscribers added to the mailing list. Since 2013, a total of 139,445 articles have been added to our newspapers/journals collection, 36% (49,974 articles) of which have been uploaded to the library online database SealionPLUS.

IV LIBRARY VISITORS

The Library visitorship stood at 5,126 this year. About 47 per cent came from outside the Institute, among them are delegates from Singapore Management University Libraries, UiTM Kedah (Malaysia), Raja Ali Haji University (Indonesia), University of Helsinki (Finland), and Botswana Institute for Development Policy Analysis (South Africa).

Highlights of Library visits. (Top left) Sharing session on collection management with SMU librarians by Head of ISEAS Library, 6 July 2018; (Top right) Head of ISEAS Library guided a Tour to Library repository for antiquarian books, 6 July 2018; (Bottom left) Head of ISEAS Library showing Toshio Egawa Collection to visitors from University of Helsinki, 1 November 2018; (Bottom right) Staff demonstrating Library online catalogue to visitors from Botswana Institute for Development Policy Analysis, 29 March 2019.

V LIBRARY ADMINISTRATION

Work Experience Program (WEP)