It is nice to be reminded by our customers that we really do have some wonderful resources and collections here at UC library. I recently received a lovely comment on the De Jong collection from Bruno Shirley, an external researcher  who had attended the De Jong exhibition in central and a panel talk that was part of the NZ Asia conference here at UC.

“I mentioned that I was particularly taken by the palm leaf manuscript on display, and if that’s representative of the material in the collection then I can’t help but feel that Canterbury now decisively has the edge in material for the study of Buddhism in New Zealand, if not of Asia more generally! Congratulations to you and to all involved for acquiring and beginning to categorise such an excellent resource.”

There are 12 000 De Jong books in UC library’s collection which have all been catalogued and Matt Oram created a first level finding aid for the archival material before he joined the team at central. Some of the manuscripts and rare books are on display in level 2 of central and are well worth a look.

This is the palm leaf manuscript…