If you are outside the United States, you can ignore this email.
This is an email to clarify how we ship materials from the offices in Southeast Asia. We always seek the most cost effective method. A bit of background. Up until 2008, all of our offices in this region maintained APO (military post offices).
These worked just like a post office and the offices were able to use this method. In 2008, the KL office closed its APO (other offices outside of Southeast Asia had closures as well). At the time, we found the courier to be the most effective method and
used that. Two years ago, the Jakarta APO closed operations forcing us to use sea freight to the United States (port of Baltimore) mostly because of the volume of materials. This June, Bangkok closed the APO facilities. Bangkok and Jakarta looked into courier,
but it would significantly increase the cost of shipments. We also looked into postage, but the logistics were too complicated for the limited number of staff on hand. With the change at the Bangkok office we looked into having the all materials shipped to
Jakarta for consolidation. We found shipments from other Southeast Asia countries were relatively expensive (in the case of Bangkok and KL it was as much to ship from those posts to Jakarta) meaning there would be no savings by consolidating in Jakarta.
When you request titles for purchase in all the offices that use sea freight , our staff will ask if you would like us to send the material as “rush.” This means we will send the material by courier. If there is interest, I can review
more at AAS.
Country |
Shipped from |
Mode of shipment |
Brunei |
Kuala Lumpur |
Courier |
Burma |
Bangkok |
Sea Freight |
Cambodia |
Bangkok |
Sea Freight |
Indonesia |
Jakarta |
Sea Freight |
Laos |
Bangkok |
Sea Freight |
Malaysia |
Kuala Lumpur |
Courier |
Philippines |
Manila |
APO |
Singapore |
Jakarta |
Sea Freight |
Singapore: ISEAS and NUS |
Kuala Lumpur |
Courier |
Thailand |
Bangkok |
Sea Freight |
Timor Leste |
Jakarta |
Sea Freight |
Vietnam |
Jakarta |
Sea Freight |
Carol L. Mitchell, M.L.S., Ph.D.
Library of Congress, Southeast Asia Office
American Embassy, Jakarta