Antique dealer and collector Hans van der Kamp collected more than 6,000 photographs made in the Dutch East Indies. More than a year after this unique and diverse photo collection was purchased by the Royal Netherlands Institute of Southeast Asian and Caribbean Studies (KITLV), the pictures have now become available online in the Digital Media Library. The collection includes images of general colony life, still lifes based on the tradition of 17th century painting and images showing photographers at work in a studio.
Some 80.000 titles at the East Asian Library are now fully accessible through the online catalogue rather than the paper card catalogue. Also, Indian and Indonesian materials are being processed, the collection of Chinese DVDs are steadily added to the catalogue, and three quarters of all Japanese and Chinese printed journals are now requestable by issue. This is the result of our ‘Asian Collections’ project, which will be completed in the third quarter of 2015 – in due time for the move to the new Asian Library.
The Sinology collection gets a boost thanks to the opening of a Taiwan Resource Centre for Chinese Studies (TRCCS) at Leiden University Libraries (UBL).
The Taiwan Resource Center for Chinese Studies (TRCCS) has been opened on October 27, 2014. Kurt De Belder, University Librarian: ‘By opening a TRCCS the Leiden University’s internationally renowned Sinology collection is both confirmed and expanded.’ Worldwide, there are nine centres, among others at School of Oriental and African Studies (London), the University of Texas at Austin, Leipzig University and the Institute of Oriental Studies at the Russian Academy of Sciences.
Leiden University is to have a unique expertise centre on Asia. This centre, the Asian Library, will hold extremely rare Asian collections and offer new opportunities for teaching and research.
- Visual of Asian Library to be built on Leiden University Library rooftop.
The Asian Library clearly signals Leiden University Libraries’ intention of becoming the world’s top expertise centre on Asia. ‘Leiden has the world’s most extensive collection on Indonesia and is one of the major Asian libraries in the Western world,’ comments University Librarian Kurt De Belder. ‘With the combination of top research and teaching on Asia at Leiden University, the extensive Asian collections, the close collaboration with cultural heritage institutions and the international network of Leiden University and the University Libraries, we are truly an international hub on Asia.’ De Belder expects that the Asian Library, to be constructed on top of the existing library building, will be in use by early 2017. The book depository will be ready earlier, at the start of 2016.