(1 Mar 2022) The 12th conference of the European Association for Southeast Asian Studies (EuroSEAS) will take place at the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales (EHESS), on the new Campus Condorcet at Paris-Aubervilliers, France, from 28 June to 1 July 2022.
One of the panels is organised by Marije Plomp (Leiden University Libraries) and Jana Igunma (British Library) on behalf of the Southeast Asia Library Group, hoping to bring together librarians, archivists, area specialists, curators, and researchers. The title of the panel is “Southeast Asia Libraries between Open Science, heritage collections and ethical standards of custodianship”.
Panel Description
The foundations of European libraries holding Southeast Asian heritage collections are found mainly in the colonial enterprise. Both the collections and the accumulated knowledge about them bear the stamp of the values and beliefs of the European, nineteenth and early twentieth century collectors and scholars, whose assignments were inextricably bound up with the mission of the colonial state.
Post-colonial voices from both academia and the broader society have exposed how some of these values have continued to influence the way European libraries manage, describe and present heritage material. As a result, some of these institutions have begun to critically investigate the make-up and provenance of their colonial collections, as well as the manner in which the collections are being managed. These endeavors have given rise foremost to policies directed at bridging the physical distance between heritage collections and the various stakeholders in Southeast Asia. Most libraries have begun taking measures to facilitate access to the collections and academic output through, for example, digitization and digital collections, Open Access institutional repositories, research scholarships and facilities, and online catalogue tutorials, seminars and Open Access e-publications promoting the collections.
This panel wishes to further explore these and other practices that can be taken up by libraries aimed at reducing inequalities related to access to heritage collections and knowledge production, next to other topics related to ethical custodianship. Examples include supporting Open Science and Open Access; opening up the collections for everyone, not just academia; providing free access to primary and secondary sources, independently from language/script, place of publication, peer-review, and format of publication; improving discoverability of material in non-European languages; critical re-evaluation of the language, scripts and standards used for cataloguing; heritage collection crowd sourcing projects; (re)discovery of collections; provenance research and acquisition transparency in the context of data protection and privacy legislation; optimization of the digitization process and projects; ethical issues arising from digitization; opportunities of IIIF (International Image Interoperability Framework); and digital and/or physical re-unification of archives and heritage collections that were split up historically. Papers can discuss theory, practices, cases or policy making.
Paper presentations on any of the aforementioned topics are invited from librarians, archivists, area specialists, curators, researchers and graduate students who are working with Southeast Asian collections. The deadline for paper proposals is 15 March 2022. If you wish to submit a paper proposal, please contact Marije Plomp or Jana Igunma before the deadline.
