EDITORIAL
Paul van der Velde
Editor-in-chief

IIAS
The official opening of the building in which the headquarters of the IIAS
are located is scheduled for 10 to 12 May. Three days of activities are
being planned in cooperation with the other occupants of this building, the
Kern Institute, the Research School CNWS: School of Asian, African and
Amerindian Studies, and the Projects division of the Department Languages
and Cultures of Southeast Asia and Oceania. A seminar will be organized on
Asian and African performing arts and there will be performances of dance
groups from India, Malawi, and Madagascar. 
During the last few months representatives of the IIAS have paid visits to
prominent institutes in the field of Asian Studies in Japan and in Germany.
In Leiden an agreement for the compilation of an inventory of Russian
Asianists was concluded with Professor Kotovski of the Oriental Institute
in Moscow during his visit in November. The visits of Professor B. Metcalf,
Professor J. Campbell and Professor P. Gosling, President, Secretary
Treasurer and past Secretary Treasurer of the Association for Asian Studies
respectively, has further strengthened the ties already existing between
the IIAS and the AAS. The IIAS will man a booth at the AAS annual meeting
in Washington in April in order to make closer contact with our American
colleagues. This is why you will find an AAS page in the current issue of
this newsletter.

IIAS ON WORLD WIDE WEB
The IIAS is planning to open its doors wider to the Electronic Super
Highway and the world of internet. Before the summer of 1995 the IIAS will
start running its own computer server and World Wide Web (WWW) site. For
those of you who have not made the acquaintance of this fast-growing medium
of communication and exchange, our intern trainee, Annelies de Deugd, has
written an article on the Internet and Asian Studies which will give you an
insight into this new and exciting development which will multiply the
possibilities for communication between Asian scholars. Information on WWW
and Asian Studies will become a regular feature in our Newsletter which
itself is available through Internet. By means of the server and our WWW
site we will keep those connected informed about our activities. this
service will accentuate our role both as a national and an international
institute, for up till now our electronic information was available only
through Oasis, a subsystem of the Campus Wide Information System of Leiden
University.

ESF ASIA COMMITTEE
Intra-European cooperation is being enhanced, judging from the promising
start made by the ESF Asia Committee. During a meeting in September, the
Asia Committee selected eight workshops on Asian Studies which will be held
throughout Europe in 1995. On the ESF Asia Committee pages you will find
ample information on these workshops which cover the whole regional and
thematic scope of Asian Studies. Besides these workshops the fellowship
scheme which is dependent on national funding is beginning to take shape.
So far the governments of the Netherlands and France have offered seven
fellowships. It is expected that more countries in Europe will join in this
promising scheme. 

EDAS AND GASE
The European Database for Asian Studies (EDAS) which is an initiative taken
by the ESF Asia Committee and the implementation of which has been
entrusted to the IIAS is growing daily. We are building on the expertise
acquired during a pilot project in the Netherlands which has resulted in
the Guide to Asian Studies in the Netherlands '94. This project is nearly
complete and information about some 1500 Asianists residing in the
Netherlands has been fed into the EDAS. The Guide to Asian Studies in the
Netherlands '95 will appear in May. Enclosed in this issue of the IIASN is
the preliminary Guide to Asian Studies in Europe (GASE) which has been
based partly on the response to our questionnaires which we have sent with
the previous issue of this newsletter. In it you will find the names of 600
Asianists, 400 institutes, 300 organizations, and 50 newsletters active in
the field of Asian Studies in Europe. We hope that all parties involved
will react to our request for information. In GASE you will find
questionnaires which we would ask you to fill out if you have not already
done so. On the basis of the additional information we receive, we hope to
be able to present you with a more elaborate edition of this preliminary
guide in the next issue of our newsletter.

INTERACTIVE PROVISION FOR ASIAN STUDIES
The first supplement to this newsletter contained the speeches delivered
during the official opening of the IIAS in 1993 and was entitled 'Asian
Studies in Global Perspective'. The present supplement, 'Provision for
Asian Studies in Europe', is conceived in the same vein as the first
supplement, which is to inform Asianists about the state of affairs in
particular branches of Asian Studies. The second supplement contains the
slightly edited papers delivered during the conference on the present and
future state of provision for Asian Studies in Europe held in Oxford in
December. With the advent of new technologies, the possibilities for access
to the rich holdings of the Oriental collections of the European libraries
have increased. Cooperation between the libraries is a precondition for the
accessibility of their holdings because a lot of the software used by the
different libraries is not compatible. 
 
CENTRAL ASIA AND THE CIS
There are plans afoot to found a European Association for Central Asian
Studies during a conference on Central Asia which will be held in
Copenhagen in August. If this is successful, all Asian regions will then
have their own organization. Therefore we are happy to announce that we
have succeeded in filling the vacancy of Central Asia editor: Ingrid
Nooijens specializes in the 19th century history of Mongolia where she
lived for more than two years. Central Asia has always been an area which
is difficult to grasp as an entity. Perhaps this derives from the fact that
for centuries the nomads living in the area managed to elude national
boundaries. Central Asia is defined as follows: "Mongolia, Inner Mongolia,
Xinjiang-Uighur, Tibet, Turkmenistan, Tadjikistan, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan,
Kazakhstan, the southern part of Siberia in the north and the northern
regions of Afghanistan and Iran in the south. Central Asia is featuring
increasingly on the map of Asian Studies, mainly due to the emergence of
the newly independent republics after the birth of the Commonwealth of
Independent States (CIS). It is a pleasure to introduce our CIS editor,
Leonid Kulikov, who is a PhD student at the Research School CNWS. He will
function as the link in expanding our knowledge about the state of Asian
Studies in the CIS.

IIASN
The editorial staff of the IIASN now consists of 12 editors and so far more
than 300 Asianists have contributed to our newsletter. The many positive
reactions from our readership have been an enormous stimulus for us. With a
press run of 13,000 copies we are reaching the majority of Asian scholars
in Europe and a growing number of Asianists outside Europe. Through our
expanding network of contributors we will be in a better position to be
able to give coverage of what is going on in the field of Asian Studies
today. This year the newsletter will appear three times: in March, June,
and October. Several sections of the newsletter will be updated on a weekly
basis. These include the international agenda section and the vacancies
section which can be accessed electronically. In this manner we hope to
increase the service to our readers.