>> Books
for Asian Studies at Boston University Libraries
BU's Mugar Library contains
a collection of several thousand books and journals on Asian Studies
in Western languages, as well as a small specialized collection
on Japanese art history donated by Boston's Museum of Fine Arts,
including materials in Japanese language.
The Theology Library focuses
its attention on Christianity and its relationship with religions
throughout the world. The library subscribes to journals dealing
with Asian Christianity and purchases monographs which support the
school's work in missions, inter-religious dialogue, and Christianity
in Asian culture. Journals dealing with Asian studies include publications
in Western languages, Chinese and Korean
The Frederick S. Pardee Management
Library provides research resources as well as a collection
of books and journals in Asian business (see links below).
Please consult BU on-line library
catalogues to retrieve specific titles or search by subject. Several
research guides with access to electronic resources are available
to the BU community, and include Asian art and archaeology, Asian
religions, Asian-American studies and Asian philosophy. For links,
see below.
Boston University Mugar Library Website:
http://www.bu.edu/library/
Boston University Libraries Research
Guides (links open in new window)
>> Chinese Literature Books at the MLCL
Department
The
collection, developed with the support of the Humanities Foundation by
Prof. Zhu Hong to aid teaching, consists of about 2000 volumes, and
includes Chinese-English and monolingual Chinese dictionaries; modern
edited texts of the classics of Chinese literature; anthologies of 20th
century writings; literary scholarship; Chinese scholarship on film history;
and English translations of Chinese classics. A new grant from the Humanities
Foundation administered by Professor Catherine Yeh is helping to further
broaden the scope of the collection.
>>
Audiovisual Collections: Geddes Language Center and Krasker Film/Video
Services
The Geddes Language Center maintains a collection of
about 300 video titles in Chinese, Japanese, and Korean, most with
subtitles. Approximately two-thirds are feature films, while the
rest are documentaries and educational videos in Asian languages,
history, music and cultural studies. The on-line
catalogue provides a short synopsis of the video and other details
such as film length, director, and year produced. Videos may be
viewed at the Center, either by individuals or groups.
Krasker Film/Video Services provides instructional
support to Boston University faculty, staff, and current students.
The films and videos owned by Boston University are listed in
an
on-line catalogue at http://media.bu.edu.
The catalogue is searchable by title, director, keyword, subject
or series heading; a description of each title is included. The
collection includes over 380 documentaries and feature films on
Asia.
>> Specialized Collections
Boston University also offers extraordinary, specialized library resources
in East Asian archeology and Central Asian Studies:
Library of the International Center for East Asian
Archaeology and Cultural History (ICEAACH)
The specialized research collections on East Asian
archaeology and related fields of the ICEAACH Library offer a unique
resource to the Boston University community as well as the general
public. Library holdings include over 6,000 books, numerous journals,
12,000 photos and slides, and thousands of maps. The core of this collection
is constituted by the comprehensive and authoritative personal research
library of the eminent archaeologist and scholar of ancient China,
Prof. Kwang-chih Chang. ICEAACH is also actively expanding the collection
through acquisitions as well as exchanges with research institutes
around the globe. An online catalogue is available through the ICEAACH
website (see
on-line catalog).
The Library is non-circulating but welcomes scholars,
researchers, and the interested public to make use of its collections
in the Center's reading room. Photocopying and scanning facilities
are available. The library is open to the public during normal business
hours (Monday through Friday 9:00 am to 5:00 pm) and is located on
the fifth floor of 650 Beacon Street (at the Kenmore T Station) on
the Boston University Charles River Campus.
Central Asian and Islamic Rare Book Collection
at BU’s Howard Gotlieb Archival Research Center
The Central Asian and Islamic Rare Book Collection
at BU’s Howard Gotlieb Archival Research Center Library
combines three of the world’s best private scholarly libraries
that were created by renowned Western scholars of the region.
Individually they include:
1. Iran & Central Asia: The Library of Richard
N. Frye. Ca. 6,500 books, 110 journal titles (3,500 volumes)
2. Languages & Literatures of Central Asia:
The Library of Karl H. Menges. Ca. 3,080 books, 50 journal titles
(1,150 volumes), 5000 off-prints
3. The Cultures of the Karakorum Highway: The Library of Karl Jettmar.
Ca. 6,500 books, 118 journal titles (2,500 volumes), 3,500 off-prints
The Frye collection covers the countries of the Persian Empire from
the Achaemenids to modern times. It is exceptionally strong in rare
publications of the 19th and early 20th centuries covering the history,
literature, religion, philosophy, and art and archaeology of Iran,
Azerbaijan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Afghanistan from
Achaemenid times to the 20th century, and also has important groups
of publications on Armenia and Georgia. Within the library is contained
an important collection of publications related to Zoroastrianism,
mostly published in India in the last quarter of the 19th century and
the first quarter of the 20th century. The library includes publications
in some two dozen different languages.
The Menges collection represents one of the
most comprehensive research collections devoted primarily to the
languages of Central Asia and neighboring Turkish-speaking areas.
It is particularly strong in publications in Central Asian languages
published in the countries of Central Asia in the first half of the
20th century, in addition to publications in Western and Slavic languages
(as well as Chinese, Japanese and Korean). A significant number of
the former cannot be found in any American academic library. A strong
focus of the Menges collection is the interrelationship between the
literatures and languages of the Turkic-speaking peoples of Central
Asia, always a focus of Menges’ work. The collection
also contains a good group of rare books of the 18th, 19th and early
20th centuries.
The Jettmar collection is devoted to the cultures
of the high mountain peoples of the Hindu Kush, Karakorum and Pamir
Mountain areas, as well as adjacent areas of Eurasia. Its primary
focus is on the archaeology and ethnography of the peoples of these
regions, and is comprehensive in those subjects, with particularly
strong holdings of scarce Russian monographs from the 1960s through
1980s. It contains significant concentrations of publications on
the archaeology of Afghanistan, Pakistan, and the peoples of Northern
India. Of the three libraries, Jettmar’s
covers the largest geographical area, reaching from the Western borders
of Eurasia to Xinjiang in China and from Siberia to the Persian Gulf.
Although each library is significant and important
on its own, the three libraries together—due to their complementary character
and the very small amount of internal duplication—form a highly
significant resource for the scholarly study of Central Asia and Iran.
This amalgamated library of over 17,000 monographic volumes, and more
than 200 complete periodical runs in over 8,500 volumes, as well as
some 13,000 offprints, 2,500 slides and correspondence and manuscripts
by the three scholars, rivals the holdings of virtually all major research
institutions. Many of its volumes are currently unavailable anywhere
else in the United States.
The Islamic Rare Book Collection Website:
http://www.bu.edu/archives/holdings/rarebook/islamic.html
>> Other Relevant
Resources in Boston and New England
BU students and faculty can access
and borrow from vast combined
collections of 19 libraries in Boston and New England through the Boston
Library Consortium’s “Virtual
Catalog”, the Boston
Library Consortium borrowing card program, and
also obtain materials through interlibrary
loan.
By special arrangement, faculty and graduate students associated with
BU’s School of Theology can
obtain limited privileges through the Boston
Theological Institute (BTI) Libraries Network.
>> Asian Studies
Links
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