Thai cultural institutions, such as libraries, archives, and museums, seldom engage with the development of global bibliographic standards and lack unified domestic standards and guidelines. Therefore, most of these institutions have limited international collaboration experience in sharing collections, instead developing their own unique ways of managing in-house collections. In contrast, while collections outside of Thailand are varied and influenced by various sociocultural norms and institution prioritization, institutions outside of Thailand that collect Thai materials more readily adopt Anglo/Eurocentric metadata standards.

The varied approaches in acquiring and describing Thai materials inside and outside of Thailand greatly impact the accessibility of these collections. Scholars in relevant fields such as Thai Studies and Southeast Asian Studies have faced numerous challenges in discovering, locating, and accessing relevant materials. Inevitably, these challenges have subsequently biased the construction of knowledge.

Japan is one of a few Asian countries that has its own distinctive national bibliographic standards and culture while also efficiently adopting international standards and participating in international networks. While at CSEAS, I will investigate the extent of Thai materials held in Japan and how Thai collections are appraised, acquired, and described by Japanese cultural institutions. The findings are expected to elucidate the influences of an outsider worldview that underlie the acquisition and description of materials from less dominant cultures. This study is part of a broader research journey to examine the complexity of social justice issues in information practices.