Introduction to THDL Collections

Collections are the equivalent of the stacks in a traditional library, and constitute its major holdings of texts, videos, images, maps and other data that are at the heart of the library. Unlike traditional libraries, however, these different forms of collections can be accessed independently, as well as through a variety of integrated presentations. Users of the library can thus search across all videos, texts, images and so forth in the entire library according to various criteria (place, theme, date, etc.), or they can consult specific organizations of these resources constituting collections based on thematic, spatial or temporal criteria.

There are five overarching types of such collections:

(i) Multimedia Resources
(ii) Special Collections
(iii) Environmental and Cultural Geography Collections
(iv) Thematic Collections
(v) Journals

All of these draw from the library's underlying full array of holdings of texts, videos, images, maps and other form of data, but they emphasize different structures and perspectives. In summary, the "resources" are searchable databases of all the texts, videos, images, maps and other objects within the library. These are then organized according to theme or subject in the Thematic Collections - such as Art, Music, etc.- which accords more or less with current academic disciplines. The same materials are organized in an interdisciplinary manner according to attributes of space and time within the Environment and Cultural Geography Collections. Finally, there are also Special Collections which present materials cohering by virtue of the creator, such as a collection by a photographer or explorer.

 

Multimedia Resources provides integrated access to the library's entire holdings as organized by the format of the data - texts, images, video, audio and maps. Each of these can be consulted independent of the original project and uses for which they were intended, since they are all cataloged within integrated databases according to standard categories of place, time, content, creator, and so on. Our ultimate goal is a single, integrated interface accessible from all THDL pages for searching across the entirety of Collections by any relevant criteria. For the time being, however, we offer separate searches on our databases of images, video recordings and audio recordings in their totalities, as well as separate search procedures for specific collections. A special note should be made of our plans for E-reprint Collections, which is offering the ability to publish articles and out of print items for easy access over the Web.
We also offer the ability to share resources of diverse types on a more provisional basis, which we term "Shareware Resources". These miscellaneous resources posted by scholars constitute items that are not yet formally integrated into the primary Collections, but that eventually may be incorporated into other collections. In the meantime, it allows scholars online to submit various miscellaneous resources for immediate viewing and use. We will soon offer online capacities to submit such materials, but for now please contact us at thdl@virginia.edu.
Status and Plans

 

Special Collections highlight individual collections of materials that belong together because they cohere around one person's (or several people) life or activities, such as a famous explorer's historical videos, or a body of images by a professional photographer. These collections' components are also accessible under thematic and geographical rubrics within the Library as relevant.
Status and Plans

Environmental and Cultural Geography Collections organize all resources in the library by place and time rather than thematic subject matter. Users can thus find all the library's resources on a given geographical location or region integrated together in a single set of presentations. This thus constitutes a spatial and temporal guide to Tibetan and Himalayan environment, culture and literature that is integrated with new remote sensing data and digital cartography. The same data and scholarship found in the thematic and special collections are available here, but are presented with each other in relationship to common spatial and temporal attributes. This encourages users to consider phenomena in relationship to their regional locale and temporal period and hence better understand the deep interrelations of human culture and the environment over space and time. Some collections herein are deliberately shaped as individual projects focused on a given place or time, while others are automatically generated by virtue of the library-wide indexing system that catalogs images, videos, and other items based on spatial and temporal location. The long term goal of building this system outside of thematic collections is to promote interdisciplinary convergences and the reintegration of knowledge beyond disciplinary guilds through a common focus on space and time.
Status and Plans

 

Thematic Collections thematically organize holdings with a focus on a specific thematic subject corresponding to academic disciplines of study, under which rubric they integrate diverse media such as text, audio, video, still images and maps. These include such broad categories as Art, Linguistics, Literature, Music, and Medicine, each of which in turn may contain diverse individual collections devoted to subthemes that are directed by different projects with their own administration, content and goals. Additionally, individual components of these collections may be classified under other rubrics as well, such that a collection of religious literature may be found both within the Religion Collections and the Literature Collections. Our vision is thus of a decentralized array of integrated yet separate Collections such that we have an optimal blend of diverse initiatives and an overall architecture integrating them. These collections also correspond to contemporary divisions of knowledge, and provide convenient bases for these specialized disciplinary approaches to be represented and utilized.
Status and Plans

 

The Journals include's THDL own Journal of Tibetan and Himalayan Studies, which provides academic credit and a high profile for major pieces of scholarship, as well as the facility for them to reference and incorporate items from the library's multimedia content and other databases. Articles are archived within relevant areas of Collections for permanent access in conjunction with like resources. Journal editions can be thematic in character, as well as broadly based. Guest editiors can take on responsibility for single editions, while institutions can also host individual editions or even series of editions.
Status and Plans