Bibliotactics: Libraries and the Colonial Public in Vietnam (University of California Press, 2026) by Cindy Nguyen examines the modern library as a contested social and political space in twentieth-century Vietnam. Established under French colonial rule as symbols of Western modernity and instruments of imperial knowledge, state libraries in Hanoi and Saigon were intended to discipline reading practices and shape colonial subjects. Yet, as this book demonstrates, Vietnamese readers did not passively accept these intentions. Through everyday use, public critique, and multilingual engagement, they reimagined the library as a site of social life, cultural negotiation, and political possibility.

Drawing on extensive archival research, including library circulation records, administrative reports, and public debates, Cindy Nguyen traces the emergence of a colonial public from 1917 to 1958, a period marked by dramatic transformations in literacy, education, and language. She situates libraries at the center of what she describes as a “competing world of letters,” where Confucian scholarly traditions in Chinese characters intersected with the expansion of French and vernacular Vietnamese education. In this multilingual environment, reading extended beyond solitary and silent practice to encompass collective, oral, and socially embedded forms of engagement that exceeded Western norms and colonial expectations.

The book further bridges colonial history with contemporary concerns about literacy, information access, and digital futures. By employing methods from digital humanities, Nguyen critically analyzes historical data, exposing its silences and biases, and connecting past infrastructures of knowledge to present debates on information literacy and inequality. Ultimately, Bibliotactics reframes the history of libraries in Vietnam as a story not of institutional control alone, but of reader agency, public formation, and enduring struggles over culture, language, and access to knowledge, offering insights that resonate far beyond Vietnam, in an era increasingly shaped by digital information systems and global debates about reading cultures. 

Cindy Nguyen’s book, Bibliotactics: Libraries and the Colonial Public in Vietnam, is now available for free open access or as a print copy through the University of California Press.

For more information, please visit: 

https://bibliotactics.com/