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acquisition wish list

Following decades of civil war and the targeted destruction of its educational resources, Cambodia faces a crisis in the preservation of its literary heritage.   In this context, where access to books is almost non-existent, and public libraries are only available to the Cambodian public in the capital Phnom Penh, CKS began to build a library collection specializing in Cambodian and Southeast Asian history and culture. Since it opened in 2001, the CKS Library has seen its collection grow from a few hundred to over 5,000 titles. With a very modest budget allocation, the CKS Library owes its development to the dynamism of its Cambodian team and to the generosity of individual donors. 

Situated in Wat Damnak, a living Buddhist monastery in the heart of Siem Reap-Angkor, the Library is the largest public academic library in Cambodia outside Phnom Penh, and the second most important for the social sciences and humanities in the whole country. Our collection, managed by two CKS-trained Cambodians, serves as an invaluable information resource to local and foreign readers, including scholars and researchers from Cambodia and overseas, local students, monks and the general public.  The Library is open to everyone, free of charge, from Monday through Saturday. The majority of Cambodian visitors are high school teachers and students, researchers, Buddhist monks and professional tour guides. Young Cambodians drop by daily and read alongside international scholars and researchers. 

 Acquisition priorities include:

• Cambodian modern literature and - often unpublished - academic material in the vernacular language, before and after the Khmer Rouge period;
• Western and Asian language books and documents relevant to the field of Khmer and Southeast Asian studies in history, archaeology, linguistics, anthropology, arts, religion, literature and political sciences;
• academic periodicals and reference materials in the social sciences, arts and humanities.
   

In just five years, the Library has expanded to include over 5,000 titles, volumes and journals.  Our journal collection includes, among others: KambujaSoriya, Bulletin de l'École française d'Extrême-Orient, Aséanie, Asian Perspectives and the journals of the Southeast Asian Ministers of Education Organization's Regional Centre for Archaeology and Fine Arts (SPAFA) and the Siam Society. The collection also contains unique out-of-print publications from local and overseas libraries, a wide selection of M.A. and Ph.D. dissertations from overseas universities and
research papers by Cambodian students from Phnom Penh Universities and CKS Fellows. Dictionaries, encyclopedias, bibliographies, directories, maps, guidebooks and daily national newspapers in English, French and Khmer are also available for reference. We also offer two internet-accessible public computers and a performing arts media station featuring traditional Cambodian music.

The CKS Library has been elected as a member of the Consortium on Research Material on Southeast Asia in the United States and is the first library in Southeast Asia elected to membership in the Council of American Overseas Research Centers. Plans are underway to build a new storage annex adjacent to the main library building, with dedicated space for archived
and fragile material, maps and journals.
 

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