An analysis of books on Thailand acquired by the Library of Congress Bangkok Office from 1998 to 2000

Abstract

The objective of this research was to analyze books on Thailand acquired by the Library of Congress Bangkok Office from 1998 to 2000 in terms of type, subject, author, publisher, year of publication, language, reference and index, price, and methods of acquisitions. The research was done by the use of data collecting form as the tool in collecting data from 2,250 titles of books acquired by the Library of Congress Bangkok Office from 1998 to 2000. The result of books on Thailand acquired in all three years (1998-2000) were the same in terms of type, subject, author, publisher, language, reference and index, price, and methods of acquisition. The highest amount or majority of books acquired in all three years were general books. For reference books, the highest amount in all three years were manual/handbook, while the majority of reports were researches. Moreover, the highest amount or the majority of books on Thailand acquired by LC in all three years were on social science, written by personal authors who were Thai, published by private publishing firms, were in Thai, had no reference, had no index, had price in the price range of 101-400 baht, and were acquired by means of purchase. As for the year of publication, the highest amount acquired in 1999 and 2000 were published in 1999 while the highest amount acquired in 1998 were published before or in 1996. Furthermore, the research result showed that apart from general books, the Library of Congress Bangkok Office also acquired reference books, reports, rare books, and pamphlets with reports being the second most of books acquired by LC. Finally, findings showed that the majority of books published by academic institutions and international organizations had reference.