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ISSN 1039-3498 | no. 42 | December 1999


From London to Laos: travels of a Thai librarian

Thai librarian Lek McFadden recently spent two months travelling in Europe and Southeast Asia. While this was partly a holiday, she also carried out valuable work on behalf of the Library, attending major conferences and visiting libraries and book suppliers.

In July Lek attended the International Thai Studies Conference held in Amsterdam, before travelling to London to visit the Southeast Asian sections of the British Library and the School of Oriental and African Studies Library.

During August she was in Myanmar (Burma), Cambodia and Laos. In all three countries she had discussions with Australian Embassy staff and, at national, university and other libraries, on acquisitions and help to local institutions. Her visit to Myanmar was assisted by the distinguished librarian and scholar U Thaw Kaung, recently a Harold White Fellow at the National Library of Australia.

Returning to Bangkok she was one of a large Australian contingent at the IFLA Conference and also visited the National Library of Thailand and the libraries at Thammasat University and the Bank of Thailand. Together with other National Library of Australia staff she had useful discussions at the Australian Embassy in Bangkok about the operations of the Thai Acquisition Program.

In mid-September she spoke at the ‘George Coedes Today’ conference which was convened jointly in Bangkok by Thai and French researchers. The National Library holds an extensive collection built up by Professor Coedes, a distinguished French scholar on Southeast Asia. Participants at the conference were interested to hear about the collection and to receive documentation on it.

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Please address any comments and enquiries to The Editor, Gateways: lkirwan@nla.gov.au

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