Annual sessions of the Library Group for Southeast Asia (SEALG)1 are an important event for specialists involved in the formation and description of book collections and other written and artistic collections of libraries and research centers, as well as for those who are dedicated to studying the cultural heritage of countries in this region. At the previous SEALG session (Frankfurt, June 2014), participants decided to accept the invitation of the British Library's South Asia Archive and Library Group (SAALG) and jointly hold the 2015 annual session in Paris under the overall theme "France in South and South-East Asian Studies". The main objective of the session was to familiarize participants with the book and museum collections of France related to these regions, and with the work of their cataloguers, restorers and other specialists who made these documents and artifacts accessible to both researchers and anyone interested.

Meetings of the first day (July 3) were held in the premises of the French School for the Study of the Far East (Ecole francaise d'Extreme-Orient / EFEO), a scientific center with a long and glorious history. It began in 1898, when the Permanent Archaeological Mission in Indochina, created on the joint initiative of the eastern branch of the French Academy of Inscriptions and Belles-lettres (L'Academie des inscriptions et belles-lettres) and the colonial authorities of the then French Indochina, began working in Saigon. Since 1900, the Archaeological mission became known as the French School for the Study of the Far East, and in 1902 its headquarters became Hanoi. Among the tasks of the School were archaeological and ethnographic research, collecting manuscripts, preserving cultural monuments, studying the languages of the region and the history of civilizations from India to Japan. To this end, a library and museum were established in Hanoi, which later became the National History Museum of Vietnam, then museums in Da Nang, Hue, Saigon, Phnom Penh and other places. Since 1907. The school ensured the preservation of archaeological sites of the Angkor temple complex (Cambodia). This stage of its history is associated with the names of such outstanding scientists-Orientalists as P. Pelliot, A. Maspero, P. Demieville, J. Sedee and others.

With the end of World War II and the emergence of new independent states on the territory of the former French Indochina, a new stage in the history of the School began. Forced to temporarily leave Hanoi, and later Phnom Penh, the School gradually expanded its sphere of influence beyond mainland Southeast Asia, opening branches in India, Indonesia, Japan, and Thailand. Among the scientists who created the glory of the School in the second half of the XX century, it is worth mentioning Zh. Filliosa, R. Steina, J.-F. Grolier, S. Arembo and M. Durand. By the end of the century, the School had moved back to Phnom Penh and Hanoi, opening branches in Vientiane, Kuala Lumpur, Hong Kong, Taipei, Tokyo, Seoul, and Beijing. The School's new priorities include research on social, religious, and ethnic issues in contemporary Asia. In recent years, the School has paid special attention to preserving the cultural heritage of the region, taking a leading place in international programs for translating texts and images to electronic media, in joint expeditions conducted by scientists from Asia and Europe under the auspices of the European Consortium for Field Research in Asia (ECAF).

The first day's sessions were opened by Rachelle Gidoni (EFEO), who delivered a report on "The most important South Asian collections in the collections of France". She noted that all these collections, including collections of ancient documents and materials, are now stored in Paris. The speaker gave a detailed description of each of them, emphasizing that the French Orientalists of the past who studied the South Asian region often transferred their collections to libraries in order to ensure access to them for readers. Today, new technologies allow librarians and other professionals to solve this problem more successfully through online catalogs, electronic libraries, and interlibrary exchange.

The presentation "Maurice Durand and his archive at the Frankfurt Library for Southeast Asian Studies" was presented by SEALG Vice-Chairman Holger Warnk. The speaker spoke about the activities of M. Duran when he was the director of the EFEO office in Moscow.

Lyubov V. GORYAEVA-Candidate of Philological Sciences, Senior Researcher at the Institute of Oriental Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences, l.goriaeva@yandex.ru.

1 For its activities, see: Vostok (Oriens), 2014, No. 6, pp. 159-161.

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Hanoi in 1954-1957 and its collection of materials on traditional Vietnamese literature. This collection of 121 archival boxes was transferred by Durand to Yale University, part of the collection was purchased in 1969 by the then director of the School for the Study of the Far East of the Goethe University, Professor Otto Karov, and found its place in Frankfurt, in the vaults of the university library. The author of the report presented an overview of this part of the M. Durand foundation (12 large folders containing mainly bibliographic references, and several smaller folders with book summaries, work notes and letters).

Historian Arundhati Virmani, lecturer at the Graduate School of Social Sciences in Marseille, made a presentation "Archives of the Marseille Chamber of Commerce and Industry: a source for the history of modern India". She noted that the documents from this fund often remain beyond the attention of researchers involved in the history of France's trade relations with the countries of South Asia and the Indian Ocean. Founded in 1599, the Chamber was designed to oversee the maritime trade of France and, if necessary, protect its interests. The Chamber's archives contain documents detailing France's trade relations with the region since the end of the 18th century. Using the example of a number of sources, the speaker showed how the relations of the French colonial authorities with Indian trading companies were built and what role French commercial and industrial firms played in the development of economic ties with this country. Special mention was made of such sources as business correspondence related to trade, customs tariffs and benefits received by France.

In the report "A brief history of the archives of the School for the Study of the Far East", EFEO employee Cecile Capo spoke about how the School's archival collections were formed, starting from its foundation and up to the present. Created in the late 19th century. As one of the means of centralizing the region, the School contributed to the political development of French Indochina. At the same time, an important academic task was being solved: collecting and preserving the cultural heritage of Indochina countries, manuscripts, artifacts, etc., as well as research materials (drawings, maps, prints, handwritten copies, travel notes). According to the speaker, the priority task today is to organize this valuable archive in order to make it accessible to researchers.

The topic of one of the EFEO collections was also addressed by her colleague Jacqueline Filliosa, who made a report "Odyssey of the collection of Pali manuscripts from the funds of the School for the Study of the Far East". The researcher said that the French collections include 1,349 Pali manuscripts originating from Sri Lanka and the Buddhist states of Indochina, with 939 of them stored in the National Library of France, and 157 in the Paris School for the Study of the Far East. Collection of manuscripts in Pali, started in 1900. Louis Finot, later continued by Georges Sedes and Suzanne Karpeles, who purchased copies of original manuscripts from the royal and monastic libraries of Siam and Cambodia. Pali manuscripts from EFEO's Hanoi branch, with its closure, made a long journey with a stop in Southern India, until, two decades later, they found their final resting place in the collections of the Paris School. Since 2000, the EFEO catalog of Pali manuscripts has been available online on the School's website.

Olivia Pelletier and Isabelle Dion of the National Archives of Overseas Territories (ANOM) presented a joint paper on Indochina-related documents in the ANOM collection. Founded in Aix-en-Provence in 1968, the archive became a centralized repository of documentation related to the administration of France's" overseas Territories " from the 17th century to the mid-20th century, when most of them gained independence. Later it was supplemented with documents from the Paris National Archives and the former Ministry of Colonies. The majority of them are materials related to the activities of the first French trade missions and religious missions throughout the entire length from India to China, starting from the XVII century, documents of colonial administrations, as well as personal archives donated by ANOM. Of particular interest to the researcher is the collection of visual materials (photographs, postcards, photographs on glass plates) that came from a variety of sources, both public (administrative, missionary, military) and private.

"Missionaries, travelers, scientists," said Jerome Petit, curator of the Indian Manuscripts Collection at the National Library of France. He said that the library's collection includes 1,878 manuscripts in Sanskrit and 1,064 in other languages of India. The foundation of this collection was laid at the beginning of the XVIII century by the librarian of Louis XV, Jean-Po-

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le Bignon, who asked missionaries going to India to send him manuscripts in Paris that would give him an idea of Indian literature. In response to the request of O. J.-F. Ponce sent 170 manuscripts from Bengal, while O. E. Le Gac and O. J. Calmette sent 70 manuscripts from South India. By the end of the 18th century, the library's collection was enriched with manuscripts collected by French travelers and scientists, such as A. Anquetil-Duperron, A.-L. Polier, G. Gentil and O. Ossan. In the 19th century, when indology was elevated to the rank of a science, the collection was expanded by the personal collections of famous scientists: E. Burnouf, E. Senard, A. Fouche and others. The author of the report emphasized the difficulties faced by the cataloger working with the texts of this multi-volume collection, written in different fonts and in different languages.

Francois Lagirard (EFEO) introduced the project "Manuscripts from Lanna to EFEO". Through the efforts of the School's specialists, electronic copies of hundreds of manuscripts from forty-one monastic libraries in Northern Thailand and the Bangkok library of the Siam Society have appeared on its website. The collection includes more than 18,000 digitized pages. The subject matter of the texts is mainly related to North Thai Buddhism and the genre of traditional Tamnan chronicles, written mostly in tham (dhamma) in the language of Northern Thailand and serving the purpose of cultural and linguistic unity of the peoples of the region. The speaker emphasized that the project to create an open access database is designed to promote the development of an interdisciplinary approach in research on Thailand.

The meeting was opened on 4 July by Annabel Gallop (British Library), "Digitization of Malay-Indonesian Manuscripts: a brief overview". The researcher spoke about the new prospects that have opened up for scientists with the appearance of digital copies of manuscripts, documents and other materials and artifacts in free access on the Internet, and about the increased demand for them. The report presented the main online collections of Malay and Indonesian manuscripts and outlined the challenges faced at this stage by library staff and those who use these resources in their work. The actual basis of the report is the experience of the British Library, where a program of digitization of manuscripts has been implemented for several years.

Claudia Goetze-Zam (Eastern Division of the Berlin State Library) presented a report on the reconstruction of the traditional structure of the library fund. Its very title is "From Specialized book collections to Scientific Information services: What is the fate of the Berlin State Library's Southeast Asia Collection?" it outlined the problem that her colleagues are currently facing. More than half a century ago, a specialized collection of books related to South Asia and the Far East, separated into a separate structure by the German Research Society (Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft), existed under the auspices of the Berlin Library. After the Society decided to transform the specialized collections and include them in the so-called information services service for scientific communities, this could not but affect the work of the South-East Asia meeting.

The topic of France and its place in the world of Malay studies was discussed in the report of Lyubov Goryaeva (Institute of Oriental Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences) "Studying the Malay-Indonesian written tradition in France: a view from Russia", which spoke about the role of French scientists in familiarizing Europeans with the most outstanding achievements of Malay-Indonesian culture and masterpieces of its literature. One of the key topics of the report was the collaboration of French orientalists-D. Lombard, A. Chamberlain-Loire, C. Guillot and others. with their Russian colleagues and the help they consistently provided them during the crisis of the Soviet library system and the associated "information hunger". The second and equally important topic was the research language. The speaker stressed that not only Russian and French, but also German and Dutch are losing their positions on this issue. Currently, European scientists prefer to write in English or directly in the language of the country under study, which significantly reduces the circle of their potential readers.

"Meeting of the Shans with the French. Socio-political movements in the Upper Mekong Special Zone at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries, " said Jotika Khur-Yarn, Curator of the Southeast Asian Book Collection at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) Library in London. He noted that the area at the junction of the borders of Myanmar, Thailand, Laos and China, previously known as the "special zone" (zone reservee), attracted the attention of the researcher as a place of interaction of various ethnic groups, the constantly changing political and social situation, and the long-standing rivalry of the colonial powers of Great Britain and France. The speaker stressed that his work is at the stage of collecting materials and evaluating the results of the project.-

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cumulations of sources. Nevertheless, he managed to identify priority areas of his research, the first of which will be the analysis of manuscripts of one of the most numerous peoples of Indochina - the Shan, which contains valuable information on the social history of the region.

The session concluded with a report by SEALG Chair Doris Jedamski (University of Leiden) entitled "Are the one-dayers forgotten?". Explaining the unusual title, the speaker stressed that one-day items are printed or handwritten materials that are not intended for long-term storage: restaurant bills, railway tickets, invitations to events, etc. Once in the hands of a collector, these items become documents of the era and carry information that often does not fall into the works of history. Some of them are created in a single instance and are therefore unique. The researcher asked the question: can these materials become an independent object of storage in library collections? Her collection of mementos from the Dutch colonial era in Indonesia has clearly shown that travel brochures, theater programs, menus, suitcase stickers, as well as one - day address invitations, hotel and store bills can shed light on those sometimes very important facets of everyday life that otherwise would have been forgotten.

In the intervals between sessions, the session participants got acquainted with the library of the School for the Study of the Far East and the history of the formation of its collections, as well as conducted a tour of the National Museum of Asian Arts (Guimet Museum). An important event was a round table with the participation of SEALG group and invited guests, where everyone spoke about the situation with the formation of Oriental library collections in their country. At the end of the meeting, SEALG Deputy Chairman Holger Warnk suggested donating duplicates of books in Indonesian stored in the Frankfurt University Library to the Nusantara Society Library (ISAA at MSU).

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