A List of New Books for your Christmas reading on South-East Asia - December 2011

Here's a list of selcted new books for your Christmas reading on South-East Asia published in South-East Asia. Click on the title for more information of each book available from SOAS Library catalogue.

• A mirror reflecting the entire world : the Pali Buddhapādamaṅgala or 'Auspicious signs on the Buddha's feet' / critical edition with English translation by Claudio Cicuzza.

• Tourism research in Malaysia : what, which way and so what? / editors, Kadir Din, Jabil Mapjabil.

• Palace, political party, and power : a story of the socio-political development of Malay kingship / Kobkua Suwannathat-Pian

• The Philippines and Japan in America's shadow / edited by Kiichi Fujiwara and Yoshiko Nagano

• Philippine ancestral gold / edited by Florina H. Capistrano-Baker

• Miyah and the forest demon / story by Tutu Dutta-Yean ; illustrated by Choong Kwee Kim.

• Sacred sites of Burma : myth and folkore in an evolving spiritual realm / Donald M. Stadtner

• Upland transformations in Vietnam / edited by Thomas Sikor ... [et al.].

• Employment, living standards and poverty in contemporary Indonesia / edited by Chris Manning and Sudarno Sumarto.

• Misunderstood Myanmar : an introspective study of a Southeast Asian state in transition / Koh Kim Seng.

• The Ram Khamhaeng inscription : the fake that did not come true / Barend Jan Terwiel.

• The Buddhist monasteries of Muang Sing : the wats and their vihans / Wolfgang Korn.

• The river of life : changing ecosystems of the Mekong Region / Yos Santasombat.

Have a good time with Christmas holiday and Happy New Year 2012!

Online Statistics South-East Asia

Here’s a guide to a number of electronic statistical resources as well as tips on assessing quality of information for South-East Asian studies.

Official web sites from the countries of ASEAN region:

• Brunei

The Department of Statistics for the Prime Minister’s Office of the Brunei Darussalam has collected and compiled national statistics and related information, by conducting statistical census and surveys, and from administrative records maintained by other agencies.

• http://www.depd.gov.bn/statistic_data.html
  
  

• Cambodia

The National Institute of Statistics (NIS), which is part of the Ministry of Planning, is the focal point on statistical matters in Cambodia. The NIS compiles and consolidates statistics provided by decentralized offices and also collects primary data through household and establishment surveys and population, agricultural and economic censuses. Many development partners financially and technically assisted NIS since 1993.

• http://www.nis.gov.kh

• Indonesia

Badan Pusat Statistik (BPS) is a Non-Departmental Government Institution directly responsible to the President. BPS' main activities are undertaken in a regular cycle. The population Census is conducted every ten years, at the years ended with zero. The agricultural census is conducted at the years ended with three. The economic census is conducted at the years ended with six.

• http://www.bps.go.id

• Lao PDR

Lao Statistics Bureau (LSB) is a center of socio-economic statistics supplying to all organizations of the party, government, various sectors, local and others for doing research for policy, social-economy, setting up socio-economic development plans and analyzing specific issues.

• http://www.nsc.gov.la

• Malaysia

The Department of Statistics Malaysia (DSM) is a premier government agency under the Prime Minister's Office entrusted with the responsibility to collect, interpret and disseminate latest and real time statistics in the monitoring of national economic performance and social development.

• http://www.statistics.gov.my

• Myanmar/Burma

The Central Statistical Organisation (CSO) is the provider of official statistics of Myanmar.

• http://www.csostat.gov.mm

• Philippines

The National Statistics Office (NSC) is a recognized world-class provider of statistical and civil registration products and services.

• http://www.census.gov.ph
• Singapore
  The Singapore Department of Statistics (SDS) is the National Statistical Authority responsible for statistics on the Singapore economy and population.
• http://www.singstat.gov.sg

• Thailand

The National Statistical Office (NSO) has provided a comprehensive census sorted by tracks and districts of the provinces. At the moment, it is available in Thai only [Links for English version do not work].

• http://www.nso.go.th

• Timor-Leste/East Timor

The National Statistics Directorate (Direcção Nacional de Estatística – DNE) is the state department responsible for the co-ordination of the National Statistical System and for the collection, production, analysis and dissemination of official statistics on the demographic, social, environmental and economic domains.

• http://dne.mof.gov.tl

• Vietnam

The General Statistics Office (GSO) is an institution directly under MPI, performing the advisory function to help the MPI Minister in doing the task of state management in the field of statistics; conducting statistical operations and providing socio-economic statistical information to all agencies, organisations and individuals in accordance with the law.

o http://www.gso.gov.vn

International sources of information, containing data and statistics of the ASEAN region:

• International Statistical Agencies provides a listing of national statistical agencies worldwide compiled by the US Census Bureau.

• www.census.gov/aboutus/stat_int.html

• United Nations Statistical Division provides many useful links. For example click on the Statistical Databases tab and you will see a link on the left hand side of the next page to ‘National Statistics’ which will take you to a database of national statistical agencies.
• http://unstats.un.org/unsd
  

• International Monetary Fund is an organisation of 185 countries that works to foster global growth and economic stability. Click on the Data and Statistics tab to view the wide range of data available.
• www.imf.org

• The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development consists of 30 governments and provides a huge amount of economic and social data. Select the Statistics link from the left-hand menu. Like for IMF, some of the more important subscription-based OECD data can be found on ESDS International
• www.oecd.org

• Official Statistics on the Web is a useful starting point for statistical resources on a topic. You can browse by country, topic or subject. Some resources are subscription based (in which case you won’t get access) whilst others are free.
• www.offstats.auckland.ac.nz

• Nation Master

In this website, there are a number of options you can select for your statistics.

• http://www.nationmaster.com

THESAURUS OF INDONESIAN ISLAMIC MANUSCRIPTS (TIIM)

This database provides information on Indonesian Islamic manuscripts as complete as possible, written both in Arabic and local languages. It also provides some other useful information such as the author names with their biographical accounts, number of copies kept in all libraries around the world, catalogues that list the related manuscripts including their pages and summaries, and all the articles and books about them.

The database shows an even greater importance with the availability of information about the conducted, as well as the ongoing, philological works. It is hoped that not only can it avoid unnecessary repetition in studying these texts but also fill the gaps found in the previous studies.

Considering a huge number of Indonesian Islamic manuscripts kept around the world, mounting to hundred thousand manuscripts or even more, as it is thought, this database is definitely a lifetime project in which all data will be continuously revised and completed in accordance with the research findings in the future.

If you have any research data and information should be included in the database, please contact me at omanwae@gmail.com

One thing I should mention that this early version of the database is not complete yet at all. You may still find many texts explained in Indonesian , or even texts without any explanation.

Any comments and advices are welcome to make the database more useful for academic audiences in the future.

--

Oman

CV: http://cv-oman.blogspot.com

Weblog: http://www.naskahkuno.blogspot.com

--------------------
Dr. Oman Fathurahman

Faculty of Arts and Humanities,

Syarif Hidayatullah State Islamic University, Jakarta

http://www.uinjkt.ac.id/

Bibliography of Asian Studies Upgrade Announcement

Dear BAS subscribers,

We are pleased to announce that a new version of the Bibliography of Asian Studies will soon be launched, along with an upgrade having close to 800,000 entries. This new version offers a state-of-the-art discovery system with simplified searching and facet-based browsing. Refinements based upon such categories as Author, Subject, Country/Region, Journal, Publication date, or Type of publication are provided through facets, and can be easily combined; the number of entries in each category is provided. A new category, Language, has been added. In addition, all records have been converted to standard Unicode, which means that the diacritic-rich entries of the BAS are now accessible to any modern browser without any need for special settings on the part of the user; these can be easily copied, pasted and printed in standard programs and are compatible with all generally available Unicode fonts. Export to bibliographic management programs has also been improved and is provided through the RIS format.

The switchover will occur on Monday, September 12, 2011. Users will be automatically directed from the old URL to the new URL for a limited period. However, we recommend changing to the new URL that is given here as soon as possible after September 12, 2011: http://bmc.lib.umich.edu/bas

[SOAS staffs and students have full access to this website via their SOAS id and passwords]

Please contact the BAS editor, Frank Conlon (conlon@u.washington.edu), with any comments or suggestions.

Thanks,

Lisa Hanselman
BAS

Association for Asian Studies
825 Victors Way, Suite 310
Ann Arbor, MI 48108
Tel: (734) 665-2490
Fax: (734) 665-3801

Index Medicus for South-East Asia Region (IMSEAR)

Index Medicus for South-East Asia Region (IMSEAR) is an archive of selected publications in health sciences in the WHO South-East Asia Region. Materials in IMSEAR include formally published health science journals, health reports and documents.

Items in IMSEAR, http://imsear.hellis.org/, are organized under categories, sub-categories and collections reflecting type of materials, countries and journal titles.

The site has also provided a choice of languages -- لعربية 中文 English français русский Sinhalese español

National Library of Indonesia: online digital collections

National Library of Indonesia.
http://www.pnri.go.id/en/default.aspx
has a growing online digital collections. This provides free access to
historic books, manuscripts, grey literature and newspapers.

Its digital archival collections include:

• The pictures which are made by Johannes Rach (1720-1783)
• Manuscript collections from the Bataviaasch Genootschap van Kunsten en Wetenschappen, a society of intellectual people built on 1778
• Several photo collections which owned by National Library of Indonesia

Ganthaloka: The World of Books, Burma (1932-1939)

A collection of Ganthaloka (Gan-da-law-ka) or the Burmese version of 'The World of Books' is one among the treasures of SOAS Library. The collection, though incomplete, covers a long range of issues published between 1932 and 1939. For more information, see the SOAS Library web page here.

This blog intends to publish the content pages of the issues available from SOAS Library. These are compiled in 6 volumes/bindings.The first volume contains 8 issues published in 1932 and 1933. For the content pages of the 8 issues, see in this LINK.

The content pages of the issues in the 2nd volume (1933-1934) are coming up soon!