About the Library

The David Thomas Library specializes in minority languages research and development in Southeast Asia. The library has more than 21,900 items on various subjects such as linguistics, cultural study of minority groups, literacy, language development, ethno-arts, translation theory and practices, etc. in the Southeast Asian context.

The library inherited a collection from Prof. David Thomas (1930-2006), a well-known linguist in Asia. The collection consisted of thousands of first hand historical linguistics data researched in Southeast Asia from the 1950’s to the 1980’s, and it became a valuable resource for language research.

Our library is a member of the Teamwork Library Consortium, which provides a union catalog of libraries from different regions of the world specialized in linguistics research. The consortium promotes cooperation and resources sharing of participating libraries, to make valuable contributions to international library co-operations.

The David Thomas Library is maintained by SIL Thailand as part of SIL's commitment to public service and scholarship.