The SRIFIAS Central Asian Archives
The Central Asian Archives is a special collection within the SRIFIAS Library that consists of two types of materials:
1) a collection of microfilms and photocopies (obtained primarily from libraries in Moscow and St. Petersburg) of out-of-print publications dealing with Central Asia, all of which were previously unavailable at Indiana University’s Wells Library and most of which are quite rare in the United States in general;
2) a collection of microfilms of Persian, Turkic, and Arabic manuscripts containing historical, biographical, and geographical works on Islamic Central Asia, obtained from manuscript repositories in Western Europe, Turkey, India, Pakistan, Afghanistan, and above all the former Soviet Union.
A printed hand-list of microfilmed manuscript holdings (type 2 above) is available in the Library. The SRIFIAS and Indiana University’s Digital Library Program (DLP) are collaborating on a project to provide on-line access to a range of digitized materials from the Central Asian Archives. These materials will be made available through this site when ready.