The Special Collections at the Monash University Library have an extensive holding of Asian Collection materials with a particular focus on East and Southeast Asia.
The Asian Collections house rare and archival, books, pamphlets, photographs and ephemeral materials. Some of the significant collections include:
Image: Kojin haikai gafu: zen
Materials from these collections are on display in the current exhibition.
The Suetsugu collection, named after the donor Mr Susumu Suetsugu of Matsue, is a large collection of eighteenth and nineteenth-century Japanese manuscripts and rare editions of seventeenth to nineteenth-century Chinese classics.
In addition to the materials in the Suetsugu Collections, Special Collections has an array of other Japanese material including unique photograph albums alongside some scrolls and historical texts. We also hold a significant collection of classical Japanese fairy tales translated into English during the Meiji period. They contain colourful woodblock prints and are made of crepe paper with silk thread bindings. You can view more of our Japanese collections online at Monash Collections. Japanese Photographs, Japanese Fairy Tales.
Image: Japanese topsyturvydom
Image: The Ogres of Oyeyama
Our Southeast Asia Collections are a large holding of mainly pamphlet type material, covering Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore and other parts of Southeast Asia. Most of the pamphlets date from the 1940’s to the 1970’s and are in Indonesian, English or Dutch. The collection includes many rare items and covers topics including politics, religion, and popular culture. Other print materials are held in the Merle Ricklefs and archival collections.
The Australia Tibet Council Collection donation is a research repository of Tibet related material, including journals, books and ephemera.
The Library’s Asian collections can be found within Search.
Read our short guide on how to request and view items from our Asian Collections held within Special Collections.