Named after Cornell's scholar of Southeast Asia and professor of modern literature and linguistics, who devoted three decades to development of the Southeast Asia collection, the John M. Echols Collection on Southeast Asia comprises one of the largest collections of monographs on the region in North America. Its subset of monographs in Western languages similarly constitutes the largest collection of Western-language monographs on this subject area in the world. Titles for the Western-language portion appear in eight languages: Dutch, English, French, German, Spanish, Portuguese, Italian and Russian, ranging in date from the early 17th century until 1900.
The collection defines Southeast Asia liberally and includes titles on Indochina, Burma, Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore, Malay Archipelago, Java and Indonesia and addresses such topics as local religion and customs, social issues, colonialist and imperialist economics and industry, linguistics and anthropology.
Complete collection: 163 reels in four parts and three supplements
Supplement: Titles in a Western Language Other than English from the 19th Century
27 reels