Highlighting MEAP Projects Across Asia at the Association for Asian Studies Conference in Indonesia

On Tuesday, July 9, 2024, former MEAP board member Laura Brueck, Professor of South Asian and Comparative Literature at Northwestern University, and current MEAP board member, Daniel Majchrowicz, Associate Professor of South Asian Literature and Culture at Northwestern University, chaired a session titled "Digital Collections and Community Archives: The Modern Endangered Archives Program across Asia" at the Association for Asian Studies' (AAS) AAS-in-Asia conference(opens in a new tab) held at the Universitas Gadjah Mada in Yogyakarta, Indonesia.

MEAP Program Manager Elizabeth Lhost opened the program with a pre-recorded video overview of MEAP, which was followed by presentations from two MEAP project leads:

• Evi Lina Sustrino, Universitas Gadjah Mada, Indonesia | Recovering Chinese Religious Printed Materials in Central Java(opens in a new tab) [Project Grant]
• François Tainturier, Inya Institute, Myanmar | Documenting Colonial Era Monastic Collections in Former Principalities of the Shan State(opens in a new tab) [Planning Grant]

After their presentations, the two project leads shared their experiences writing the MEAP grant proposal, designing the project budget, and allocating resources for the project activities.

A few key takeaways from their discussion were:

1. It's essential to build local capacity through team member training on digitizing archival materials and creating metadata.
2. The MEAP team at UCLA offers guidance and support throughout the digitization process and reviews sample materials to make sure digital assets meet technical standards.
3. It can be helpful to identify local institutional partners that can sustain local access to the project materials (digital files and metadata) at the end of the project, even though this is not a requirement and the UCLA Library provides these services.
4. Issues regarding the legal and ethical rights of the materials to be digitized are handled with care and informed by local custodians’ recommendations.

Overall, the discussion was a success, and the panel was a great opportunity for MEAP grantees and board members to share MEAP's work with other conference attendees and participants.