Online Resources for Asia Scholars
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The Newsletter No. 88 Spring 2021 29 The Focus Online resources for Asia scholars Sonja Zweegers and Alessandra Barrow During the past year not one of us has escaped the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic; we were forced indoors, sequestered to our ‘home offices’ in order to work. Those of you used to being out in the field, roaming the earth, looking for the next research adventure, have now had to make do with Zoom meetings and Facebook groups and archival browsing. Those of us more accustomed to working out of a university building, chatting to colleagues during coffee breaks, and suffering our daily commutes, well, we too have now learned all about online meeting etiquette, and probably failing quite splendidly. The online world has become all too familiar to each and every one of us. And so, for this issue of The Newsletter, not a Focus section as you know it. Something a little bit different, designed specifically for the time in which we find ourselves: an exploration of online resources that may assist (or at least entertain) the Asia scholar. o accomplish this, I reached out Throughout the collection we have added in mind, if you know of any online resources to IIAS alumni and fellows, and tidbits from the websites mentioned to that you would like to see added to this list, Tother friends made during the past provide some enjoyable reading in addition which we will be continuing to curate on our 10 years as Editor of this publication. to the more practical information. website, then please contact me with your Their (your) input led to the compilation of Finally, the pages of this Focus (and other ideas. You can find the ever-expanding list useful spaces with regard to Asia presented sections in this issue) were assembled with at www.iias.asia/resources. Key used throughout on the following pages. Whilst this list is far the outstanding help of Alessandra Barrow, this section: from comprehensive, and some regions are IIAS intern for the past few months. Alessandra Sonja Zweegers, CA Central Asia more widely represented than others, we is currently completing the Research Master Editor of The Newsletter [email protected] SA South Asia intend it to be a valuable start to a collection in Asian Studies at Leiden University. I am that we will continue to build upon on the IIAS extremely grateful to have received her SEA Southeast Asia Alessandra Barrow, website; hopefully with your help. The list is assistance for this issue, especially at EA East Asia Research MA Asian Studies student gathered by resource type, but we have tried, a time when we all might be feeling rather at Leiden University, and intern for MENA Middle East where possible and if relevant, to indicate disconnected. Let that be a reminder to The Newsletter. https://linkedin.com/in/ and North Africa to which region the resource most relates. reach out and work together! And with that alessandra-barrow-675297172 30 www.iias.asia/resources Online Resources The Focus for Asia Scholars Digital collections, databases and archives Appraising Risk SA SEA Archnet CA SA SEA MENA scholarly activities. Artstor images come with Base Ulysse SEA high-quality metadata from the collection This is a historical database of climatic This website is a resource focused on catalogers, curators, institutions, and This is an online digital archive of crisis in the Indian Ocean World. On this site, the Built environment of Muslim societies. artists themselves. the National Overseas Archives in Aix-en- you can access articles, relevant maps, and Including architecture, urbanism, environ- Much of the site will require a subscription, Provence. It contains over 45,000 individual visualizations. The Appraising Risk Partnership mental and landscape design, visual culture, but check to see if your institute/library can photographs, albums, postcards, posters, is an international collaboration of scholars and conservation issues. It has a range of grant you access. In addition, Artstor’s ever- drawings and maps documenting aspects and researchers dedicated to exploring the collections and books, city records, maps, growing Public Collections offer approximately of the French colonial empire. critical role of climactic crisis in the past architecture plans and the like. 1.3 million freely accessible images, videos, and future of the Indian Ocean World. The documents, and audio files from library special http://anom.archivesnationales.culture. partnership seeks to create a comprehensive http://archnet.org collections, faculty research, and institutional gouv.fr/ulysse spatial and temporal database of human- history materials, as well as hundreds of environment interaction and interdependence thousands of open access images from partner during periods of climactic change. museums. Anyone may view and download Arsip Nasional Republik these collections; no subscription or login Bichitra: Online Tagore https://www.appraisingrisk.com Indonesia SEA required. Variorum SA This website offers access to thousands https://www.artstor.org This resource contains nearly all of of unresearched documents about the history Tagore’s writings in Bengali and English, Archive of India Music SA of the Nusantara and its connections to the from manuscript to print. The website can world at large during the seventeenth and be navigated in English, Bengali and Hindi, This site is a repository of gramophone eighteenth centuries. This website also gives Asia Art Archive EA SA SEA and the search engine allows you to locate recordings of India set up in collaboration access to some older book publications of any word or phrase used in his works. with the Manipal University’s MCPH (Manipal the former ‘Landsarchief’, beginning with the Based in Hong Kong, Asia Art Archive Centre for Philosophy and Humanities). If you published Daily Journals of Batavia Castle is a catalyst for new ideas that enrich our http://bichitra.jdvu.ac.in/index.php wish to listen to the clips you may need to (1624-1682). understanding of the world through the contact the archive directly. collection, creation, and sharing of know- https://sejarah-nusantara.anri.go.id ledge around recent art in Asia. This website http://archiveofindianmusic.org hosts online modern Asian art and archives. Biodiversity Heritage Library It includes a range of articles and opinion pieces relating to modern art in East Asia, Not Asia-specific, this site is the largest ARTstor Southeast Asia and South Asia. open access digital library for biodiversity The Archive of the Institute literature and archives including books on for Taiwan History The Artstor Digital Library features a wide https://aaa.org.hk/en plant taxonomy and natural history texts. range of multidisciplinary content from some Most of the collection is public domain (ITH, Academia Sinica) EA of the world’s top museums, artists, libraries, content but the BHL works with rights holders scholars, and photo archives, including rare to obtain permission to make in-copyright This website was launched in 2008. It stores collections not accessible anywhere else. Atlas of Mutual Heritage SEA materials openly available under Creative personal papers and collections, family and New contributions are added regularly. Commons licenses. The library has texts folk papers and institutional archives that The Artstor Digital Library provides This website hosts an incredible database from 1450s to 2000s. have been collected by the Archives of ITH straightforward access to curated images from and atlas of information, maps, drawings, for more than 20 years. The website can be reliable sources that have been rights-cleared prints and paintings of locations significant https://about.biodiversitylibrary.org accessed in Chinese and English. for use in education and research. You are to the Dutch VOC (East Indies Company) and free to use them in classroom instruction and WIC (Dutch West India Company). https://archives.ith.sinica.edu.tw handouts, presentations, student assignments, and other non-commercial educational and https://www.atlasofmutualheritage.nl The Database of Religious History: Pre-Buddhist cults Entry by Anna Sehnalova cross the large geographical space of the Tibetan Plateau and the AHimalayas, cultures and societies of Asia Art Archive: speakers of Tibetic and Qiangic languages share certain religious notions and similar ‘Art’ and ‘craft’ in Sri Lanka ritual practices which do not derive from Buddhism or Yungdrung Bön (g.Yung drung Bon) but rather relate to local natural environments and social structures. Annemari de Silva addresses the marketing them as ‘designer’? Perhaps it is Being very variable and difficult to gendered and postcolonial valuations the woman from a family of businesspeople subsume under one term, these localised of ‘art’ and ‘craft’ in Sri Lanka. heading one of the biggest handloom religious cults have been called ‘popular’ retailers in the country? (Bell 1931), ‘nameless’ (Stein 1972), ‘folk’ he word ‘entrepreneur’ can mean Handicrafts, or artisanal crafts, replete (Tucci 1980), often also ‘shamanism’ or such radically different things in with cultural significations and political uses, ‘bön’ (bon), and in specific cases ‘pagan’ Ta developing country. Who, for are not surprisingly a fairly nebulous public (Ramble 2008) and ‘mundane’ (Huber instance, is the woman entrepreneur policy concern: in some countries, handicrafts 2020). They are concerned with mundane in handicrafts in Sri Lanka? Is she the policy falls under the domain of creative aims of well-being and prosperity, fecundity woman in the north coast, widowed by industries, while in others it remains under and progeniture, health, protection and the tsunami with children to care for, the small industries or enterprise. Perhaps the warfare, and general worldly success; not beneficiary of a programme to encourage only tacit assumption is that it’s not quite mass with soteriology. They most likely represent entrepreneurialism as a poverty alleviation production, nor is it automatically counted indigenous, pre-Buddhist cults of Tibet and strategy? Or is she the woman at the as ‘fine art’.