THDL Collections Status

Environment and Cultural Geography Collections

Status : This is intended to be the very center of THDL, but was relatively late to start and hence is developing slowly in a series of planned phases. Our current focus is on infrastructural development and base data, which will provide the support for particular studies to be developed and published. The most central aspect of this is launching the gazetteer as an index of place names, and then linking this to GIS plotting on a basemap, census data, and corresponding multimedia.

Once this is implemented in the fall of 2003, we will need to expand data coverage for contemporary administrative units from the Tibet Autonomous Region to other Tibetan parts of China, and then to other nations such as Nepal, Bhutan, India and Pakistan. Technically, in 2004 we will also begin to work on using satellite image of the area for backdrop to plotted points, as well as further integrate media resources into place studies on a data driven model via georeferenced indexing.

We are doing several major place projects as case studies: Lhasa for an urban environment, Ngari/Western Tibet for an entire prefecture/cultural region focusing on historical and cultural issues, and Porong for an entire region focusing on environmental-human interaction.

Thematic Collections

Status : Our primary focus is currently on Language, Literature, Medicine, and Music. We have extensive materials for other Collections, but limited stafftime to organize them for presentation. We are actively working with scholars at Cambridge and Cornell in particular on expanding representation of Southern Himalayan cultures as well. See each Collection's individual Introduction for further details.

Special Collections

Status : Special Collections of ethnographic videos and images along with textual notes was initiated in August 2003, and is continuing with a focus on southern Himalayan cultures - the Williamson, Furer-Haimendorf, Thangmi, Thak and Naga Collections from Digital Himalaya. We anticipate working out the model in a robust fashion by early 2004, and then will gradually be posting more content in 2004.

Resources

Status : The audio and video database is currently being redone in a more robust technology (PHP/MYSQL), and with that revision, we will be focusing on presenting nicely formatted collections pages in addition to a search interface. The image collections are freshly consolidated (September 2003) into over 25,000 images, but they are delivered using a simple technology (Filemaker). Over 2004 we will be gradually migrating these image collections into a new system (GDMS) that is much more flexible. A database of maps, texts, 3d object, and panoramas is not yet in place, but we plan to implement those by the end of 2003. We hope in 2004 to implement an E-reprint submission and presentation site.

Journal

Status : We are currently designing the template for the journal, and expect the first editions to appear in the spring of 2003. See its Introduction for further details.

Submissions

Status : Submissions are currently done by a variety of mechanisms, both online and offline. While we organize our Submissions web site, we request interested individuals to contact us at thdl@virginia.edu.