Explore the Southeast Asian Images & Texts (SEAiT) collection

February 20, 2013
“Bride and family” from the E. Murray Bruner Philippine Image Collection, ca. 1906-1910

Southeast Asian Images & Texts (SEAiT) is a digital archive of unique and beautiful historical images accessible through the University of Wisconsin Digital Collections Center (UWDCC). SEAiT’s mission is to put “rare materials into the hands of students” in order to support scholarship in the field of Southeast Asian studies; a partnership with the UWDCC and the project of digitizing SEAiT collections and provide easy online access to previously unavailable resources has gone a long way toward realizing this goal.

The SEAiT digitization project began in 1995 with a team of dedicated people drawn from UW-Madison departments, the Center for Southeast Asian Studies, and Memorial Library staff, who helped to create an online presence for the SEAiT collection.  Larry Ashmun, a Senior Academic Librarian in the UW-Madison Libraries who specializes in Southeast Asian & Hmong studies, has been the driving force behind the project.  Ashmun’s focus on procuring significant image donations and cultivating meaningful information about those images has been a key factor in making the SEAiT digital archive project a reality, in addition to the critical partnership with the UWDCC.

SEAiT’s collections are comprised primarily of digitized photographs and slides with accompanying title, date, location, and acquisition information. Some also include research and teaching materials contributed by UW faculty and staff, and rare or unique items from the UW Libraries’ collections pertaining to the subject.

SEAiT can be accessed through the University of Wisconsin Digital Collections Center website  by searching the Digital Collections Listing alphabetically for “SouthEast Asian Images & Texts.”

Collection Highlights:

The five Philippines collections contain striking images representing nearly a hundred years of the country’s history.

Other important Southeast Asian Collections in SEAiT include:

Want More?

To learn more about SEAiT’s background, the individual collections, and forthcoming additions, check out this Archive Profile by Larry Ashmun: The SouthEast Asian Images & Texts (SEAiT) Project at The University of Wisconsin-Madison.