Acquisitions Programs
Since the early 1960s the Library of Congress Office, Jakarta, Indonesia, serves as the regional office for Southeast Asia. The Jakarta is responsible for collecting scholarly analog and digital materials specifically from Indonesia, Singapore, Timor and Vietnam. It has expanded its operations and now oversees the representative offices in Bangkok, Thailand; Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia; and Manila, Philippines and Rangoon Burma/Myanmar. The offices also provide updates about Southeast Asia to directly to U.S. legislative staff, including congressional staff. The acquisitions programs were established support the access information needs of the U.S. Congress and the American people. Staff actively seek out and acquire material that would otherwise be unavailable to researchers. The staff maintain contacts and exchange agreements with various international, governmental, and nongovernmental organizations to acquire noncommercial material. Acquisitions trips are also taken to collect material from outlying provinces, and regularly searches local bookstores and the World Wide Web. The Jakarta office offers hundreds of serial titles, thousands of monographs, e-materials annually to CAPSEA institutions.
The offices are the primary Library of Congress unit for the original cataloging of Southeast Asian materials. The office is only one of two Library of Congress regional offices that also has preservation operations for microformatting and the only office having a digital preservation unit. The office is located in the heart of Jakarta, the capital city of Indonesia, on the island of Java. The over forty staff work in an independent compound that consists of converted two-story house three additional buildings all surrounding a small courtyard.
The staff welcome new participants and visits from scholars.
For further information, including joining the cost-recovery CAPSEA program, please contact JakartaAcquisitions@loc.gov