Acquisitions Programs
The Office operates with seven full-time local staff with supervision from an American field director resident in Jakarta but occasionally visits Bangkok. The office is responsible for bibliographic control, acquisitions and responding to Congressional Research Service (CRS), Congressional and Federal Research Division (FRD). The countries covered include Burma, Cambodia, Laos, Thailand, and Vietnam.
This section collects more than 1,000 serial titles, 2,500 monographs including films, videos, sound recordings, CDs and hundreds of PDFs annually. LC-Bangkok seeks primarily to build a representative collection on Thai, Cambodian and Lao culture, history, and civilization as well as documenting their contributions in the fields of social welfare, planning and development, economics, government, politics, sociology, history, education, military science and other areas. Materials are primarily collected in Thai, Lao, Khmer and Western languages.
A significant percentage of what the Office collects is unpriced non-commercial materials that can only be acquired by visiting government institutions and non-profit organizations daily locally and on occasion to provincial centers and adjacent countries. The Office is expanding electronic and web archiving including the 2010 Burmese/Myanmar and ongoing 2014 Thai elections along with other topics relevant to CRS and the research community. This initiative provides scholars and government researchers a unique product for studying democracy.
The Bangkok Office, like all other representative offices, is currently engaged in an extensive program review and transformation effort. This includes taking a proactive role in providing support to CRS/Congress and digital acquisitions. Once materials are acquired and provided original cataloging, and are shipped to LC-Washington or participant institutions. The staff welcomes CAPSEA participant visitors to join our Cambodian, Lao and Thai acquisitions programs.
The Library of Congress Bangkok is located inside the American Embassy, Bangkok with seven Thai nationals.
The staff welcome new participants and visits from scholars.
For further information, including joining the cost-recovery CAPSEA program, please contact JakartaAcquisitions@loc.gov