Asian Studies

PUL Databases
Languages, Linguistics,
Lists of Resources
Internet Indexes, Databases, Bibliographies
Societies, Associations
Other Resources

Selected Purdue Libraries Databases for Asian Studies

Bibliography of Asian Studies (BAS): References western-language journal articles, book chapters, and monographs on all subjects (especially humanities and social sciences) pertaining to East, Southeast, and South Asia published worldwide from 1971 to the present.
Anthropological Index Online: Indexes journals held by The Anthropology Library at the The British Museum (Museum of Mankind) which receives periodicals in all branches of anthropology, from academic institutions and publishers around the world.
Art Index: Indexes articles from English-language periodicals, yearbooks, and museum bulletins, as well as periodicals published in French, Italian, German, Japanese, Spanish, Dutch, and Swedish. Subjects include Architecture, Art History, Fashion Design, Folk Art, Graphic Arts, Industrial Design, Interior Design, Landscape Architecture, Motion Pictures, Painting, Photography, Pottery, Sculpture, Television, Textiles, Video and more.
Arts & Humanities Citation Index: is a multidisciplinary database covering the journal literature of the arts and humanities. It indexes 1,100 of the world's leading arts and humanities journals. Searches may focus on authors, contents of individual journals, ranges of publications dates, keywords, and by combinations of the above. An added feature is the capacity to trace citatons to given authors, etc. A Representative selection of non-English language journals is included.
Ethnic NewsWatch: Provides access to full-text articles from 200 magazines, journals, and newspapers published by the ethnic, minority, and native press in America. Searchable in both English and Spanish.
Historical Abstracts: Abstracts of selected journal articles, citations of books, book reviews and dissertations on the history of all parts of the world (excluding the United States and Canada) from 1450 to present. Published since 1954, Historical Abstracts currently covers over 2,000 journals published throughout the world. Besides article citations, each year it adds approximately 3,000 book citations, for a total of over 20,000 entries added each year. All abstracts are in English, and titles in languages besides English also appear in English translation.
Humanities Abstracts: Indexes 400 English-language journals in the fields of archaeology and classical studies, art and photography, dance, drama, film, folklore, history, journalism and communications, language, literature, music, and more. Includes abstracts since 1994.
Linguistics and Language Behavior Abstracts: Covers all aspects of linguistics and the study of language: Speech, hearing, phonetics, interpersonal behavior, learning disabilities, nonverbal communication, grammar, morphology, semantics, history of languages, etc.
Philosopher's Index: This database indexes and abstracts books and articles (over 400 journals) in philosophy. Among the subfields covered are aesthetics, epistemology, ethics (pure and applied), logic, metaphysics, and social and political philosophy. Author, title, journal, and keyword(s) may be searched. International in scope, it includes both English and non-English literature.
Social Sciences Abstracts: Indexes over 400 English-language journals in the fields of anthropology, economics, geography, international relations, political science, psychology, sociology, and related subjects. Includes abstracts since 1994.
Social Sciences Citation Index: is a multidisciplinary database, with searchable author abstracts, covering the journal literature of the social sciences. It indexes 1,700 journals spanning 50 disciplines, and is searchable by keyword, author, journal title, and by date. An added feature is searching for citations to individual authors and/or publications. This database indexes a representative selection of non-English language journals.
Sociological Abstracts: Abstracts the world's serial literature in sociology and related disciplines and contains enhanced bibliographic citations of relevant dissertations from the Sociological Abstracts and SOPODA. Approximately 1600 journals in 30 languages from 55 countries are abstracted in this resource.
Worldwide Political Science Abstracts: Up-to-date indexing, abstracts, and research links in political science and related fields, including international relations, law, sociology, economics, and public administration/policy. Monitors 1,235 titles for relevant items, including materials in 34 languages.

Selected Free Internet Indexes, Databases, Bibliographies

Asian Film Connections: Created by the Network for the Promotion of Asian Cinema, the University of Southern California's University Libraries, and other organizations, this site seeks to create a deeper awareness and understanding of Asian cinema by providing immediate and comprehensive information about films from Asia.
Asian Historical Architecture: is a photographic survey of Asia's architectural heritage. Hthe site contains over 6500 photos of 461 sites in seventeen countries, with background information and virtual tours. The editors of this webpage are Tim Ciccone (Columbia University) and Abe Ahn, (Yale University); and professors Yunsheng Huang (UVA) , Robert D. Fiala (Concordia), and Kerk L Phillips (Brigham Young).
Asian Reading Room: The Asian Reading Room is the primary public access point for researchers seeking to use the Asian collections of the Library of Congress in the many languages of Asia. The reading room covers the area from the South Asian subcontinent and Southeast Asia to China, Japan, and Korea. With almost 2 million books, periodicals, newspapers, manuscripts, and electronic media, the collections are the most comprehensive sources of Asian language materials outside of Asia.
Bibliography for seldom studied and endangered South Asian Languages: The Department of Linguistics, University of Osnabruck, Germany. This site is intended to help researchers of seldom studied or endangered South Asian languages, and those embarking on such a study for the first time, in locating literature on these languages. It is also intended to be a means of letting other researchers know of new work in the field which may be of interest to them. “South Asia” here includes India, Nepal, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Bhutan and Tibet.
Chinese Text Initiative: The Electronic Text Center at the University of Virginia Library, the Chinese Text Initiative is an effort to make texts of Chinese literature available on the World Wide Web. These sites are still very much under construction.
Japanese Text Initiative: The University of Virginia Library Electronic Text Center and the University of Pittsburgh East Asian Library comes the Japanese Text Initiative, a collaborative effort to make texts of classical Japanese literature available on the World Wide Web.
Silk Road Narratives: The Walter Chapin Simpson Center for the Humanities, University of Washington. A collection of historic texts that explores cultural contacts from 100 B.C. to the 1670s across Eurasia.
South Asian Literary Recording Project: Launched in April 2000, to record the voices of South Asian authors for the Library of Congress' Archive of Recorded World Literature, the project has captured the readings of prominent South Asian poets, novelists, and playwrights. The authors recorded so far represent more than fifteen of the languages of India, Nepal, Pakistan, SriLanka and Bangladesh.
Southeast Asian Archaeology Scholarly Website: A University of Pennsylvania Museum web-based bibliography for the dissemination of scholarship on the archaeology and anthropology of Southeast Asia.
Universtiy of California Press Scholarship Editions: Contains complete texts of over 100 books on Asian topics.
A Visual Sourcebook of Chinese Civilization: According to the author, Patricia Buckley Ebrey of Washington University, the goal of this "visual sourcebook" is to add to the material teachers can use to help their students understand Chinese history, culture, and society.

Languages, Linguistics, and Writing Systems

AncientScripts.com: Created and maintained by Lawrence K. Lo this is a large complex site that discusses the origin of writing around the world.
Chinese Character Writing: ACSION a non-profit Australian Centre for Social Innovations comes this short discussion on Chinese logographic writing.
Guide to the Japanese Writing System: The Kanji Dictionary Publishing Society. This site is a discussion of the Japanese writing system.
Japanese Writing Tutor: By Blake Edward Sterzinger this site is meant to help students of Japanese practice their writing skills.
Omniglot: a guide to writing systems: This website provides a guide to over 200 different alphabets, syllabaries and other writing systems, including a few you will find nowhere else. It also contains details of many of the languages written with those writing systems and links to a wide range of language-related resources, such as fonts, online dictionaries and online language courses.
Wade-Giles to Zhuyin to Pinyin Conversion Table: The UCLA Library. This table is based on the "Correspondence of Wade-Giles to Pinyin" list included in the Library of Congress Chinese Romanization Guidelines, and is best viewed with Internet Explorer 4 or higher.

Scholarly Societies and Associations

The Asia Society: America's leading institution dedicated to fostering under-standing of Asia and communication between Americans and the peoples of Asia and the Pacific. A national nonprofit, nonpartisan educational organization, the Society provides a forum for building awareness of the more than thirty countries broadly defined as the Asia-Pacific region - the area from Japan to Iran, and from Central Asia to New Zealand, Australia and the Pacific Islands.
ASIANetwork: A consortium of about hundred and fifty North American colleges, ASIANetwork strives to strengthen the role of Asian Studies within the framework of liberal arts education to help prepare succeeding generations of undergraduates for a world in which Asian societies play prominent roles in an ever more interdependent world.
Association for Asian Studies: The largest society of its kind in the world; the AAS is a scholarly, non-political, non-profit professional association open to all persons interested in Asia. It seeks through publications, meetings, and seminars to facilitate contact and an exchange of information among scholars to increase their understanding of East, South, and Southeast Asia. It counts among its members scholars, business people, diplomats, journalists, and interested lay persons.
Association for Korean Studies in Europe: This organization is the main scholarly society for Korean studies in greater Europe. Its objectives are to stimulate and co-ordinate academic Korean studies in all countries of Europe, and to contribute to the spread of knowledge of Korea among a wider public.
Centers for South and Southeast Asian Studies, Columbia University Libraries: A large collection of links to scholarly association on South Asia.
East Asia Section of the American Anthropological Association: The East Asia Section (EAS) is an officially recognized group within the American Anthropological Association (AAA), open to all members of the AAA, but its activities are intended to reach beyond the membership of the AAA. Any anthropologist anywhere in the world is welcome to join EAS, to subscribe to our EASIANTH listserv, to post, and to participate. EAS is committed to developing international channels of communication among anthropologists throughout the world. We hope to promote discussion and share information on diverse topics related to the anthropology of Taiwan; PRC; Hong Kong; Japan; Korea; other societies/cultures of Asia and the Pacific Basin with historical or contemporary ties to East Asia; transnational linkages among East Asian or between East Asian and other societies/cultures; and diasporic societies/cultures identified with East Asia.
European Association for Japanese Studies: An association of scholars and researchers focussing on Japan.
European Association for Southeast Asian Studies: EUROSEAS is an association of European scholars who want to integrate their work, directed at Southeast Asia, with that of other European Southeast Asia specialists.
International Institute for Asian Studies: is a postdoctoral research centre based in Leiden and Amsterdam, the Netherlands. Its main objective is to encourage the study of Asia and to promote national and international cooperation in this field. The geographical scope of the institute covers South Asia, Southeast Asia, East Asia, and Central Asia. The institute focuses on the humanities and the social sciences and, where relevant, on their interaction with other sciences.
Japan Foundation: The first specialist organization to foster international cultural exchange in Japan.
National Institute for Asia and the Pacific: The charter of this organization states that its goal is to be recognised as a world leading academic Institute with a breadth of expertise, wide ranging teaching capability and extensive research capacity covering all aspects of Asia-Pacific studies.
Nordic institute of Asian Studies: The organization's focus ia aimed at research relevant to the understanding of contemporary Asia within the framework of the social sciences and interface disciplines in natural sciences and the humanities. The mission of NIAS is: To undertake and support innovative research of high quality to strengthen NIAS’ position as an international ‘center of excellence’ within Asia research; To contribute to creating international recognition and respect for Nordic Asia research;
To promote NIAS’ position in the Nordic countries as an important window for high quality, research based knowledge and information about Asia.
The United States-Japan Foundation: This organization is committed to promoting stronger ties between Americans and Japanese by supporting projects that foster mutual knowledge and education, deepen understanding, create effective channels of communication, and address common concerns in an increasingly interdependent world.

Lists of Links of Resources

Asia Resources on the World Wide Web: This extensive list of online resources has been compiled since July 1996 by Raymond Lum, for publication in the Asian Studies Newsletter.
Asian Studies WWW Virtual Library: This site is produced by the Internet Publications Bureau, Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies at The Australian National University, Canberra.
East Asian Studies Links: The University of Massachusetts Amherst Libraries.
Five College Center for East Asian Studies: Online Resources: A list of links to East Asian sites to support K through 14 education in this subject area. Five College Center for East Asian Studies is one of many programs administered by Five Colleges, Incorporated. The member institutions of the consortium are Amherst, Hampshire, Mount Holyoke, and Smith Colleges, and the University of Massachusetts Amherst.
Portal to Asian Internet Resources (PAIR): This resource offers scholars more than six thousand professionally selected, cataloged and annotated online resources. PAIR directs users to Asian area content in the humanities and social sciences. It is supported by area studies scholars, bibliographers and subject selectors based at the libraries of the University of Wisconsin, the University of Minnesota and the Ohio State University.