Nanyang University (Nantah) writes an important chapter in the history of Southeast Asian Chinese communities and the evolution of the region’s higher education. Research on it started in the mid-1950s, at the time of its founding, and has persisted until now, surviving Nantah’s merger with the University of Singapore in 1980 to form the National University of Singapore. Academic interest in Nantah is not just confined to Singapore or Southeast Asia or to Chinese speakers: it is an international endeavour that has also attracted the attention of scholars in North America, Japan, Europe, etc.

A major challenge for researchers of Nantah has been the lack of a reliable, comprehensive, and accessible bibliography of primary historical data and secondary research in Chinese and English. I am gratified and delighted that a team of passionate and gifted librarians, led by Ms Ruan Yang, Head of Nanyang Technological University’s Chinese Library, has produced the most comprehensive bibliography to date of Nantah’s history, readily accessible through the internet to researchers and students all over the world.  The bibliography lists historical documents, newspaper articles, monographs, book chapters, journal articles, conference papers, government publications, internet resources, etc., and covers the years from 1955 to the present. It also lists publications by Nantah’s administrative divisions, colleges, schools, faculty, staff, academic associations, and student organizations, materials that provide a unique insight into the University’s development. The bibliography is not only comprehensive (“any publication that is related to the research of Nantah’s history will be included”) but easy to use, through search functions covering authors, keywords, subject headings, publication years, and publishers.

So the bibliography is an indispensable tool for anyone interested in studying or researching the history of Nantah. I congratulate Ms Ruan Yang and her team on their contribution, not only to the field of bibliography as such but, more broadly, to the study of Nanyang Chinese communities, for Nantah was in essence a product of the joint efforts of those communities and has a special place in their collective memory.