The Siem Reap-based Centre for Khmer Studies is rapidly becoming one of the foremost archival repositories of cultural and intellectual material in the Kingdom.

The public can now access an important addition to the Centre’s library, the private collection of retired UN Secretariat senior internal auditor, Hy Supharidh, who worked at the UN for 32 years.

He left Phnom Penh for France in 1968 to further his studies, and in 1974 joined the UN.

In 1979, he began his personal collection of news and books about Cambodia in English and French languages, and added to the collection almost daily.

The collection, now housed at The Centre for Khmer Studies, contains about 600 books on or about Cambodia, UN documents dealing with Cambodia, and international newspaper and magazine clips classified in daily chronological order from January 1979 to September 2006.

Supharidh, who lives in New York with his wife and two children, donated the collection for the centre in November 2010, and it has now been archived and is accessible.

Another important recent addition to the library is the collection of books and printed material collected by board member Darryl Collins, a leading historian who lives in Siem Reap.