The East Asia Department (EAD) at Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin – Stiftung Preussischer Kulturbesitz was established as an independent unit in 1922.

The profile of the collection is essentially shaped by the collection mandate of the German Research Foundation (Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft, DFG), which funded the Special Subject Collection (Sondersammelgebiet, SSG 6.25) in the years 1951-2015 and has been funding the Specialised Information Service Asia (Fachinformationsdienst Asien, FID Asien) since 2016.

It is in charge of the acquisition, cataloguing, and utilization of materials written in the languages of East, Southeast and Central Asia: For East and CentralAsia this includes Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Mongolian, Tibetan and minority languages of China, and for Southeast Asia the languages of Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, Timor-Leste, and Vietnam. In addition, the department also purchases literature on East, Southeast, and Central Asia written in Western languages.

Within the federal system of German libraries, the EAD provides nationwide library services and national licenses. Especially, by acting as the control centre for the Blauer Leihverkehr (BL - named after the blue-coloured paper order slips), the EAD practices a direct long-distance interlibrary loan for literature in languages of the region. This service is being organized and handled as an inter-institutional contract between the EAD and the respective specialized institutions at universities or other scholarly, academic and scientific institutions.

The portal CrossAsia provides access to digital resources for scientific and scholarly information in the field of Asian Studies. Within the project Specialised Information Service Asia the platform CrossAsia is financially supported by the German Research Foundation.

In case of any questions, the EAD's staff will be happy to assist you.