Developing the South Asia Library Collections

For the first time in the history of the Yale University Library, Yale has a dedicated Librarian for South Asian Studies.  Sarah Calhoun joined the Library in 2011, and has been working to draw together its rich South Asian legacy collections with new books and journals that are arriving monthly from South Asia.  The Library’s holdings range from art to archives, publications to personal correspondence, and manuscripts to religious artifacts.

The holdings, Calhoun notes, have been acquired over a large swath of time and are wide-ranging in terms of subject matter.  They include items such as the personal papers of officers of the British Empire and members of the American Oriental Society, records from the Office of Strategic Services, and donations from Yale alumni.  (Read more about the Collection online: https://web.library.yale.edu/international/south-asia-collection)

Given this diversity, Calhoun observes that some older holdings are just now being catalogued for the first time.  By spearheading these cataloging initiatives, Calhoun is helping to give renewed life to older, orphaned South Asian books and journals.  The work is painstaking, as Calhoun notes that call number systems and romanization conventions change over time. This makes it necessary to update the way that material is catalogued in order for today’s students and scholars to be able to discover it.  Calhoun is currently the project leader on one such grant-funded project. By the time it is completed in August 2013, twenty “hidden” Persian philology books will have been fully re-cataloged, preserved, and digitized.   (See “Enriching, Enhancing, and Connecting Yale’s Digital Collections: Yale Persian Collection” on page 22 of the 2012 Annual Report to Arcadia, https://printer.yale.edu/).

Since the South Asia Collection is so widely dispersed throughout the entire Library system, Calhoun uses technology creatively in order to bring these items together virtually in online Research Guides (https://guides.library.yale.edu/profile/SCalhoun). She is constantly updating these Guides and adds in new links to resources as they are purchased or identified.

Working with this collection, says Calhoun, brings new surprises and discoveries every day. She continues to enjoy collaborating with faculty and students as together they unearth rich, and sometimes rare, materials from the depths of Yale University Library’s South Asia Collection.