The South Asian Open Archives (SAOA) is an initiative that makes open access materials on South Asia available for teaching and research. The archive, which is administered by the Center for Research Libraries (CRL), is part of the larger South Asian Materials Project (SAMP). SAOA launched in 2019; its initial focus was on sources from the colonial era. Since then, the archive has expanded to approximately 23,000 primary and secondary sources comprised from over 700,000 unique pages of material.
Through JSTOR—a popular digital library platform—users can browse the archive by searching for text, filtering by language, or by category. The sections of the archive include:
- Art History & Music
- Caste & Social Structure
- History of Science
- Language & Literature
- Social, Political, & Economic History
- Women & Gender
SAOA has 26 member libraries from around the world. Additional support is provided by 9 Title VI National Resource Centers, including the Center for Global Studies (CGS) at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. The archive is curated by area studies librarians from SAOA’s member libraries, who identify, select, and prioritize new additions to the archives.
One of these librarians is CGS faculty affiliate Mara Thacker, who is the South Asian Studies & Global Popular Culture Librarian at the University of Illinois Library. Professor Thacker served on SAOA’s Executive Committee in 2020 and is currently a member of the Funding Working Group. Thacker is particularly excited by a new collaboration with the National Digital Library of India (NDLI) that she helped to facilitate after meeting colleagues from NDLI on her January 2020 collaborative buying trip to India with Ellen Ambrosone of Princeton University and Laura Ring of the University of Chicago.
Mr. Neel Agrawal, South Asia Digital Librarian at Center for Research Libraries, manages SAOA’s operations. Neel’s work is informed by his background in libraries, research, area studies, digital humanities, and social justice. Agrawal became involved in SAOA because of the need the make South Asian historical materials more widely available. He says that, because the archive is openly accessible, it directly confronts the need for equity within the research system.
The cover of Bāgī, a journal published in 1939-1940.
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SAOA has become a valued resource for scholars searching for census reports, legislative debates, poetry, literary criticism, and historical narratives. Undergraduate students can use the archive to discover primary sources for their research papers. Because a JSTOR subscription is not required to access the archives, members of the general public can use materials from the archive for documentary work, advocacy, and art projects. In the future, the SAOA will expand its collection by diversifying the themes of its content and by developing the ability to present non-textual materials, such as art, archaeological images, oral histories, and music recordings. Users can also look forward to improvements to the archive’s online interface. You can browse the South Asian Open Archives on JSTOR. More information about the initiative can be found on the CRL website.
The author thanks Mara Thacker and Neel Agrawal for their contributions to this post.
