Library and Museum Collections

The University of Michigan is home to one of the best library collections on Southeast Asia, as well as to extensive Anthropology and Art Museum collections.

Harlan Hatcher Library, Southeast Asia Collections

The Southeast Asia Collections at the Harlan Hatcher Library has one of the best collections of its kind in the United States. While three countries - Indonesia, the Philippines, and Thailand - have received the most comprehensive attention in collections, The Library is also concerned with developing the collection by increasing our holdings for the other seven countries that make up the geographic region: Brunei, Cambodia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar (Burma), Singapore, and Vietnam.

The Library collection can be searched online here

The Bentley Historical Library Philippines Collection

Over the past one hundred years or more, a large number of University of Michigan faculty and alumni and other citizens of the state of Michigan have played a decisive role in shaping relations between the United States and the Philippines. The Bentley Historical Library has collected the papers of many of these men and women.

The Philippine Photographs Digital Archive

The Digital photographs archive consists of over 2,100 images taken from the following Special Collections Library photograph collections. In general, the images depict Filipinos, buildings, dwellings, and monuments in and around Manila, Filipino political and military leaders, members of American commissions and military units based in the Philippines, and numerous landscape scenes, particularly on Mindanao and in Lanoa Province.

The Gerald R. Ford Presidential Library

The Gerald R. Ford Presidential Library, housed on the University of Michigan’s North Campus, contains core collections on the war in Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos during especially the Nixon and Ford administrations; the flight of refugees from Indochina after April 1975 and the admittance of many to the United States; the accounting of U.S. armed forces MIAs and POWs; and the issue of amnesty/clemency for draft resisters and military absence offenders.

The University of Michigan Museum of Anthropology

One of the nation’s largest collections of Southeast Asian archaeology, featuring various collections on the Philippines (including the Dean Worcester photograph collection) and on Thailand.

The University of Michigan Museum of Art (UMMA)

The UMMA collection of Southeast Asian art is focused on Buddhist and Hindu sculpture from Thailand, Cambodia, and Indonesia.

The Department of History of Art Archives

The Department of History of Art houses two significant collections: 

• The Southeast Asian Art Foundation Archive (SAAF Archive) contains approximately 100,000 photographs and slides, and features 18 collections of visual materials by photographers and leading scholars of Southeast Asian art. Collections may be viewed through the U-M Digital Library here.
• The Southeast Asia Archive contains photographs of monuments, sculpture and murals of Thailand and Java.

The center is committed to promoting a broader and deeper understanding of Southeast Asia and its peoples, cultures, and historiesby providing resources for faculty, students and the community to learn and disseminate knowledge about the region.