Area Studies Collections and Reading Rooms

African Collection (Office: SML 317) has a particularly strong focus on Anglophone southern, central, east, and west Africa; Francophone and Lusophone countries are also strongly represented and there are considerable resources on all other areas, including the Indian Ocean islands. Holdings on most southern African countries are close to exhaustive. Yale has one of the most impressive collections of indigenous-language material, particularly creative literature.

East Asian Collection (Reading Room: SML 219) is one of the major collections of East Asian materials in the United States, containing monographs, serials, manuscripts and government documents for topics related to and publications from China, Japan and Korea. A small portion of the collection is kept in the East Asia Reading Room; most of the collection is intershelved in the stacks of Sterling Memorial Library and Mudd Library. The collection mostly contains materials from the 19th century to the present.

Judaica Collection (Reading Room: SML 335B) is recognized as one of the major collections of Judaica in the country. The focus of the 95,000 volume collection, which includes manuscripts and rare books, is biblical, classical, medieval, and modern periods of Jewish literature and history. Rare materials are housed in the Manuscripts and Archives Department of the Sterling Memorial Library, and in the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library.

Latin American Collection (Office: SML 315) acquires the important editorial production in the fields of the humanities and social sciences published in South America, México, Central America and the Caribbean. Currently, the collection comprises approximately 400,000 printed volumes, including monographs, serials, newspapers, and government documents, and is growing at a rate of 8,500 volumes a year.

Near East Collection (Arabic/Islamic Reading Room: SML 508) has over 100,000 Arabic and Persian volumes which cover a wide variety of subject areas. The collection is particularly strong in classical texts, Islamic Law, History, Philosophy, and Arabic Literature. The Reading Room contains more than 1,000 reference sources written in Arabic, Persian, English, French, and German.

Slavic and East European Collection (Reading Room: SML 406) has over 100,000 volumes concerning Central and Southeast Europe, as well as some 500,000 volumes relating to Russia and the states of the former Soviet Union, making it one of the five largest collections in the United States. Most of the collection is shelved in the stacks of Sterling Memorial Library; a select portion is kept in the Reading Room.

Southeast Asian Collection (Reading Room: SML 315) emphasizes primarily social sciences and humanities. Countries of primary focus are in Insular Southeast Asia, i.e., Indonesia, the Philippines, Malaysia and Singapore. Materials in the Southeast Asia Collection are in both western and vernacular languages of the countries covered. Most of the books are integrated in the Sterling Memorial Library stacks.