(17 October 2016) The Library’s Thai collection contains more than 6,000 titles of printed books, pamphlets and grey literature in Thai language, dating from the mid-19th century onwards. Due to a generous gift by Christian missionaries of about 100 books and pamphlets, the earliest period of printing in Thailand, from ca.1840-1890, is well represented, including a copy of the Treaty of Friendship and Commerce between Great Britain and Siam (Siam.29), also known as the Bowring Treaty, which was printed by J.H. Chandler at the Washington Press in Bangkok in 1856.
Until recently, Thai printed books and serials acquired before 1986 were only accessible through a card catalogue in the British Library’s Asian & African Studies Reading Room, with author, title and subject sequences. However, in the past few years, efforts have been made to retroconvert card catalogues in Asian languages through internships, temporary cataloguing contracts and crowdsourcing initiatives like Libcrowds. Thanks to a four-month internship for Dr Thanyarat Apiwong in 2015, over 1,500 book titles from the Thai card catalogue have now been added to the British Library’s electronic catalogue Explore, increasing the number of Thai book titles searchable electronically to over 5000.
Read the illustrated announcement in full on the Asian and African Studies Blog
