In October 2005, Ohio University Libraries purchased of the private library collection of the late Cornell University professor David K. Wyatt. The collection, consisting of roughly 15,000 volumes, about half of which are in Thai, includes most of the standard works on Thailand and Southeast Asia in general, a substantial number of Thai royal chronicles, the greater part of King Chulalongkorn’s (1868-1910) diaries and letters, and an extensive array of monographs, memoirs and cremation volumes. The acquisition of the Wyatt collection, one of the largest private library collections ever acquired by Ohio University’s Alden library, greatly increases the scale and scope of the Southeast Asia Collection's holdings on mainland Southeast Asia.

The David K. Wyatt Thai Database was created, in conjunction with Alden Library’s Information Technology staff, to enhance public access to Thai-language materials held in the David K. Wyatt Southeast Asia Collection. Why the need for a specialized Thai-language database? Most online library catalogs in the United States index Thai-language materials in romanized script only (Yale University and the University of Michigan libraries are the only exceptions that come to mind). This is problematic on many levels. First, the American Library Association / Library of Congress transliteration system is imperfect. Second, and more importantly, romanized script is largely an artificial language, incapable of conveying tonal variations, and thus unintelligible to all but the most seasoned scholar. To be cite but one example, the Thai-language title ล้านนา หรือ ลานนา juxtaposes the terms ล้านนา and ลานนา to allude to the vexing question as to whether Lan Na (the 13 th century northern Thai kingdom) literally meant kingdom of “a million (rice) fields” or “wide open (rice) fields.” “ Lānnā r ̄ ư Lānnā,” as it appears in standard romanized script, fails to capture the nuanced meaning of the original Thai-language title. Hence the need for a Thai-language database, one that is fully searchable in Thai and romanized script, and similarly capable of displaying both Thai and romanized script.

The David K. Wyatt Thai Database was created to address an additional pressing need: Library of Congress subject headings are oftentimes less than adequate. A classic example is the all-encompassing heading “Thailand -- History -- to 1782,” which is far too broad to be useful. Thai-language (Thai Union Catalog) subject headings, while far from standardized, offer greater specificity. For this reason, the David K. Wyatt Thai Database utilizes both English and Thai-language subject headings.

David K. Wyatt

David K. Wyatt, the eldest of five children, was born in Fitchburg, Massachusetts in 1937. Wyatt spent much of his childhood in Cedar Rapids and Waterloo, Iowa. He studied philosophy at Harvard University, from which he took a Bachelor’s degree in 1959. He received a M.A. in History from Boston University in 1960. He graduated from Cornell University with a Ph.D. in History in 1966. In 1964, prior to completing his dissertation, Wyatt accepted a teaching position at the School of Oriental and African Studies at the University of London, where he taught Southeast Asia History until 1968. From 1968 to 1969, he taught at the University of Michigan. Subsequently, in 1969 he accepted a teaching position at Cornell University, where he served as the Director of the Southeast Asia Program, Chair of the Department of History, and the John Stambaugh Professor of History & Asian Studies before retiring in 2002. Dr. Wyatt briefly served as interim curator of the Echols Collection at Cornell University in 2005.

David Wyatt was the recipient of numerous awards, including a Senior Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Humanities (1973-1974), and a John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship (1983). Professor Wyatt also served as President of the Association for Asian Studies between 1993 and 1994.

During his distinguished career, Wyatt published a prodigious number of articles and books. In addition to several translations of Thai chronicles, and contributions to In Search of Southeast Asia (1971, c1987), and The Emergence of Modern Southeast Asia (2005), Dr. Wyatt is the author of The Politics of Reform in Thailand (1969), Thailand: A Short History (1984, c2003), Siam in Mind (2002), and Reading Thai Murals (2003). His most recent book, Books, Manuscripts, and Secrets, is due to be published in 2007.