Southeast Asian Core Collections

The souheast asian collections are the heart of the Library of the French school of asian studies. It covers a wide range of geographical areas, Cambodia, Laos, Vietnam, Thailand, Myanmar, Malaysia, Singapore, Brunei, Indonesia and to a lesser extent East Timor and the Philippines.

The core of the collections was built by the Indochinese studies lead by the founding fathers of our school, Louis Finot, Georges Coedès, and Henri Parmentier. The Southeast Asian collections then kept on increasing via donations, exchanges, and purchases focusing on Efeo's domains of excellency, archeology, architecture and art history, epigraphy and philology, languages and classical literature, history and religious studies.

The collections grow through purchases of documents in western languages in Paris headquarters, as well as in vernacular in Southeast Asia via the research centres in Chiang Mai, Kuala Lumpur and Jakarta among others.
The Southeast Asian collections have close to 33 000 monographies catalogued in SUDOC, half of which in vernacular, and about 300 periodicals.
In terms of statistics, Thailand has the most documents with 15 000 references in the catalogue, Indonesia is second with 6 000 titles, Vietnam has 3 000 titles and finally Cambodia with nearly 2 000.

Moreover our library has a precious collection of manuscripts and rubbings collected during our researchers field studies abroad, from the Indochinese period to present day.
These collections comprise several hundreds khmer and cham manuscripts, over one hundred siamese and pali manuscripts and a dozen indonesian and burmese manuscripts.
Finally, the collection of rubbings concerns Cambodia (over one thousand), Campa and Indonesia (several hundreds) as well as the State of Rhakine and Myanmar (several dozens).

Contact: Bernadeta Sardjono, head of the Southeast Asian core collections

EFEO News
Welcoming delegations to the EFEO 2026-2027
Paris, France, 14 October 2025
The recruitment campaign for delegates to the EFEO for the year 2026-2027 is now open. Applications must be submitted no later than 14 October 2025.

Learn more (in French)
Library
Paris, France, 26 June 2025
The EFEO library in Paris will be closed until 2 p.m. on Tuesday 1 July 20025.

It is open at its usual times, from Monday to Friday, 9am to 6pm.

Please make your book reservation requests via the catalogue, and your archive consultation requests via the form on https://archives.efeo.fr/ (bottom left of the home page).

Consult the catalogs and digital tools:
Books and periodicals catalog
- Archives and manuscripts catalog
- Digital heritage library

Please check the EFEO's Facebook page and Twitter account regularly for any updates to the conditions of public access.
Direction of Resources
Paris, France, 26 June 2025

Reporting to the Director General of Administration, , you will be responsible for managing the Resources Department. You will manage the activity of the support functions and implement the public policies in your field, with a view to efficiency and innovation. You will also perform the duties of Prevention Adviser.

Application deadline: 20 July 2025: https://bit.ly/4epSXeT
Lecture
Paris, France, 18 June 2025
On the occasion of the exhibition Angkor Royal Bronzes: Art of the Divine presented at the Guimet - Musée national des arts asiatiques until September 8, of which he is co-curator, Brice Vincent will present "Bronzes royaux d'Angkor, un art du divin: nouveaux regards sur la métallurgie du cuivre dans le Cambodge angkorien". This lecture is organised jointly by the Association des Amis d'Angkor and the EFEO.

At 5.30 p.m. in the Grand Salon of the Maison de l'Asie, subject to availability.
Conference
Paris, France, 12 June 2025
On Thursday 12 and Friday 13 June, Fabienne Jagou, in collaboration with Cameron Warner (University of Aarhus, Denmark) and Nicole Willock (Old Dominion University, USA), is organising a conference entitled ‘Succession in Times of Change in the Tibetan World’ at the Maison de l'Asie.