NEWS: Tibetan texts

In case you're interested, this is from the
"NewsScan Daily" newsletter, 25/Sep/2002.


TIBETAN LITERATURE GETS SECOND LIFE VIA DIGITAL PRESERVATION
Thousands of historical Tibetan texts are being digitally scanned and
recorded in an effort to save a wealth of literature that is threatened by
age-related deterioration. The Tibetan Buddhist Resource Center, which is
coordinating the project, has 12,000 volumes of Tibetan writings covering
Buddhist philosophy, mathematics, alchemy and ancient exotica, among other
topics. Many of the books came from refugees who carried them over the
Himalayas when they fled from the Chinese invasion of Tibet in the 1950s.
As there were no printing presses in Tibet, the books were either
handwritten or printed from wooden blocks. The Center has enlisted the help of other
organizations, including the Himalayan Art
Project, the University of Virginia and the Tibetan Knowledge Consortium. Center founder E. Gene
Smith estimates that when the project is complete, there will be 8.4
million individual digital images of the texts. "What we are doing is
creating a database," says Smith. "We will provide it initially on CD-ROM
and we hope that we can eventually have a Web site so that the images are
available anywhere in the world." (BBC News 24 Sep 2002)
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/2271016.stm


--Pablo Flores
  http://www.angelfire.com/scifi2/nyh/index.html
  "The future is all around us, waiting, in moments
   of transition, to be born in moments of revelation.
   No one knows the shape of that future or where it
   will take us. We know only that it is always born
   in pain."  -- G'Kar quoting G'Quon, in "Babylon 5"

Reply