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South Asia Collection
An Overview
The South Asian Studies collection contains over 500,000 volumes and 1,295 current serial titles, along with audio-visual materials, manuscripts, maps, microform materials, pamphlets, posters and a variety of electronic resources. The Library collects materials published in or about South Asia across many disciplines supporting the interdisciplinary research and curricular needs of faculty and students interested in this part of the world. Subject strengths include anthropology, economic development, history, literature, religion, and political science. Textbooks and juvenile literature is not acquired unless requested by faculty for teaching purposes. Over the years we have added invaluable material to our collection in the form of gifts.
Languages covered
Currently materials are acquired from South Asia in Arabic, Balochi, Bengali, Brahui, English, Gujarati, Hindi, Kannada, Nepali, Newari, Pali, Panjabi, Persian, Prakrit, Pushto, Rajasthani, Sanskrit, Sindhi, Tamil, Telugu, Tibetan, and Urdu as well as some of the tribal languages and dialects. There are older materials in Assamese, Oriya, Marathi, and Sinhala languages also in the collection.
Sources of Acquisition
The majority of our material is supplied through Library of Congress field offices in New Delhi, India and Islamabad, Pakistan, operating under the South Asian Cooperative Acquisitions Program (SACAP). We also acquire material from SACAP for the Law Library. Most of the University Press and scholarly trade publications about South Asia in English and other European languages are acquired for the collection from our approval plan vendor YBP and individual orders. Retrospective purchases are made upon request by faculty and sometimes to fill major gaps in the collection.
Geographic Regions
Geographic scope includes Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, the Maldives, Nepal, Pakistan, Sri Lanka and Tibetan language material published in South Asia.
Physical location of the collection
The collection is distributed throughout the many Libraries at Columbia University. Most materials can be found in the Avery Architectural and Fine Arts Library, the Butler Library, the Lehman Social Sciences Library, and the Business & Economics Library. The Law Library, the Burke Library, and the Health Sciences Library also have significant material on South Asia.
South Asian Studies reading Room
This special non-circulating collection on South Asian history and humanities is located on the 6th floor of Butler Library.
SAMP & CRL
Columbia's membership in the South Asia Microform Project (SAMP) and the Center for Research Libraries (CRL) allows patrons access to microforms of retrospective and hard-to-obtain journals, newspapers, and other research materials, which may be borrowed for use at Columbia through Interlibrary Loan.
Digital South Asia Library (DSAL)
The Digital South Asia Library containing digitized texts, images, reference sources, maps and union lists is a cooperative project that relies on expertise from many US libraries as well as libraries in South Asia and Europe.
SARAI: South Asia Resource Access on the Internet
SARAI is a Comprehensive list of links to resources about South Asia, including bibliographical resources, directories of scholars and organizations, etc.
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