News from the National Library of Australia

Report from the NLA

Amelia McKenzie takes up the position of director, Asian Collections at the National Library on 14 July. She has been working on the Library's Voyager implementation project and brings with her extensive experience in the Asia Pacific area.

Mr Pe Thein Zar has been engaged as a contract staff member for six months to work on the cataloguing of the Library's Burmese collection. Brief records will be created in Kinetica which will greatly enhance access to the collection.

The new Thai ambassador to Australia, Ms Suchitra Hiranprueck, visited the library on 23 June and viewed the Thai collections.

Recent significant acquisitions by the NLA include:: Aceh: why the military option still won't work. May 2003 [The latest International Crisis Group report on the serious security situation in Aceh province]; Khomun Watthanathan 76 Changwat. [Information on the culture of seventy-six provinces in Thailand]. 4 CD-ROMs. Bangkok : Samnakngan Khana Kammakan Watthanatham haeng Chat, 2002.; Minsok haksul charyo chongso [Collection of Korean folklore]. 80 vols. Seoul : Toso Chulpan Nori Madang To, 2001.; Zhongguo 2000 nian ren kou pu cha zi liao [Tabulation on the 2000 population census of the People's Republic of China]. 3 vols. Beijing : Zhongguo tong ji chu ban she, 2002.; Hanrei roppo, sho roppo year 2002 [Encyclopaedia on current Japanese law and legislation]. 1 CD-ROM. Tokyo : Yuhikaku, 2002.

LC and KITLV change the guard in Jakarta

Aside from the National Library of Australia's Regional Office, the Library of Congress and Royal Netherlands Institute of Southeast Asian and Caribbean Studies at Leiden (KITLV) have long-established offices in Jakarta. LC's office serves as its regional acquisitions centre for Southeast Asia, and maintains branch offices in Bangkok, Kuala Lumpur and Manila. The KITLV office, with eight staff, acquires material from Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore and Brunei for its Library in Leiden.

Both the LC and KITLV offices have recently changed over their expatriate staff. Jim Armstrong moved to Jakarta from Islamabad to take over from Will Tuchrello as LC's field director, and Roger Tol arrived from Leiden (where he was the chief librarian at KITLV) to replace Jaap Erkelens. Jaap was the KITLV's representative in Indonesia for the past 29 years.

Indonesian Acquisitions Program

The Office has recommenced publication of its quarterly Indonesian Acquisitions List which details recent Indonesian publications acquired for the National Library. The IAL is accessible at http://www.nla.gov.au/asian/pub/ial/

A recent purchase for the National Library is Lembaran Negara on CD-ROM. It contains the Indonesian government gazette and laws from 1950 to 2001, with bi-annual updates. This very useful resource consolidates a vast array of Indonesian laws in one easily-searched CD-ROM.

Oliver Mann (please remove '.nospam' from address) can be contacted at the National Library's regional office in the Australian Embassy, Jakarta, Indonesia.

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