Sharing the treasures of the Asian collection in the library of congress

The effort to build a world-class Asian collection in the Library of Congress began in 1865. After 139 years of continuing endeavor the collections in various Asian languages have grown to 2.6 million volumes of books, journals, and a variety of other resources in all formats. The main body of the paper provides general descriptions of the five major area collections: The Chinese and Mongolian Collection, the Japanese Collection, the Korean Collection, the Southeast Asian Collection, and the South Asia Collection. One of the unique approaches of the Library of Congress in its acquisition of foreign publications is the network of overseas offices. Three of the six overseas offices are in Asia. Jakarta, Indonesia; New Delhi, India; and Islamabad, Pakistan. These offices perform a variety of tasks in acquiring and cataloging publications from South and Southeast Asia. They also offer a cooperative acquisitions program to libraries in North America as well as in other countries. In addition to printed publications, the Library is fast developing its digital collections for both digitized and born-digital resources. These include American Memory, Global Gateway, and the Asian portals. Online reference services such as QuestionPoint and Asking a Librarian are also provided. To encourage researchers and scholars to use the Library's collections onsite, an increasing number of fellowships are offered by the Kluge Center and the Office of Scholarly Programs of the Library. Finally, the paper explains the international roles of the Asian Division and its desire to develop collaborative projects with national libraries in Asia.