This talk by Cindy A. Nguyen, Postdoctoral Fellow at the Department of History and the Cogut Institute for the Humanitie, examines the role of state-sponsored libraries within the landscape of print culture and reading public in late colonial Vietnam. Nguyen considers how library administrators and government officials defined ‘good reading’ as didactic, politically safe, and vulgarizing reading matter. Through the specific project of the Cochinchina Library bibliobus or xe sách [book wagon],* she reveals how colonial print control and book distribution drew inspiration from the Dutch East Indies Balai Pustaka and American libraries and publishing initiatives. This talk contributes two major interventions in the history of libraries and colonialism in Vietnam.

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