General Introduction to THDL

The Tibetan and Himalayan Digital Library was founded on March 1, 2000 in conjunction with the University of Virginia Library and the Institute for Advanced Technology in the Humanities. It provides an integrated environment for digital publication of many diverse projects whose separate administrations remain decentralized and autonomous. As such, the Library overall is run by an international team of scholars, and reflects a consortium of many different universities and private organizations across the world. Please see the list of participants on the "Projects and Participants" page accessible from the THDL menu tab. It is also a committed member of the Tibetan and Himalayan Information Community, which is building a broad community among digital and non-digital initiatives relating to Tibet and the Himalayas. The Digital Library consists of five overarching domains designed to collaboratively solicit, generate, and publish data and scholarship on an international scale: Collections, Reference, Community, Tools, and Education.

This Introduction to the Tibetan and Himalayan Digital Library offers a systematic introduction to the various components, partnerships and visions that guide the Tibetan and Himalayan Digital Library. It is intended to offer a quick orientation for the first time casual user, a systematic overview and in depth details for the serious user, and a consistant reference point for everyone about the current status and development of the library in its various elements. It should be read in conjunction with three other documents available off of the same menu:

While this document focuses on the overall intent and goals of the library, "Guide to Resources" instead focuses on extant resources already well developed. "Participants" then details individuals and organizations currently running the library, while "How to Participate" offers suggestions and procedures for how interested individuals and organizations could become involved.

THDL's structure has been built to accommodate a vast array of collaborative resources and individual projects within five overarching domains: collections, reference, community, tools, and education. However, the ambitious nature of this design entails by necessity that while some of these resources are well developed, others remain largely offline, or even still within design phases. The THDL home page, and the home pages of each of the five domains, is accessible on every page of THDL through the left most menu tab, while the THDL home page can also be linked at any given point by linking on the logo of the "sacred knot" that appears in the upper left hand corner of every page.

In order to see the full range of resources, you will need certain plugins installed within your browser and certain fonts installed in your system. The principal plugins are very common - Quicktime (movies/audio) and Flash (interactive maps and slide shows) - while the VRML plugin is less common (it is necessary for the 3D monastery). The fonts are, however, only necessary for those who want to use Tibetan script over the Web, or those who want to view special diacritic marks used to represent certain Asian languages in roman script. Please click here to find out what you need.

What is a Digital Library? The FEDORA and Information Community Initiatives

The ordinary user often assumes, if s/he has thought about it, that a "digital library" must be the ordinary library, but simply delivered in digital form. In other words, the contents and practices remain the same, but the vehicle of delivery changes from paper printed material and large institutional buildings, to digital blips and small desktop computers. In addition, it is often assumed that a digital library consists of simply integrating standard web pages that have links full of simple downloads of texts, images and so forth. Both of these assumptions are far from the truth. A true digital library system consists of three interwoven components each with their own internal complexities:

Thus the central nexus of the digital library concerns technology, knowledge, and community. Politics – in the neutral sense of how we build and sustain human communities – is at the heart of the digital library, which allows for new kinds of communities organized around knowledge. Exploring and developing the partnerships that can sustain these new initiatives is one of the most exciting, and difficult challenges which face us. Technology is thus used not as an end in itself, but for its tremendous power to create new forms of knowledge and community, as well as unprecedented intersections between the two. This marriage of content and community entails, necessitates and enables a fundamental transformation in how we generate, acquire, organize, refine and disseminate knowledge. The thinking through of the implications of this transformation has just begun, and yet it is a process which must go hand in hand with the technical development of digital libraries if we are to fully exploit their possibilities. Thus, in addition to technological issues, the development of the digital library as an institution – beyond the mere technical achievement is requiring and enabling rigorous intellectual and political re-envisioning of how we go about creating and disseminating knowledge.

The Tibetan and Himalayan Digital Library (THDL) is the first major implementation of an exciting new digital library initiative spearheaded by the University of Virginia in collaboration with Cornell University and with support of the Mellon Foundation to build a comprehensive and powerful digital library infrastructure based upon the FEDORA protocol. THDL is adapting this infrastructure technically and intellectually for the needs of Tibetan and Himalayan languages, Tibetan and Himalayan Studies, and Tibetan and Himalayan residents, so that it provides an integrated publishing environment for a multitude of projects from around the world. The goal is thus to stimulate interdisciplinary and collaborative initiatives that are published in multiple languages. This technological infrastructure is organized at the level of content into five overarching domains: Collections, Reference, Community, Tools and Education. These domains are built upon the model of a traditional library, but each is redesigned to reflect the transformative possibilities of a fully digital library. Finally this content and technology serve a community of diverse participants ranging over various divides but united in a common interest in knowledge; this community organized around knowledge we term an "information community". In the present case, our information community is devoted to the subject of Tibet and the Himalayas from any perspective whatsoever: environmental, cultural, historical, economic and so forth.

1. The technical basis: FEDORA

The technical basis for the digital library is called FEDORA: "Flexible Extensible Digital Object Repository Architecture" (http://www.dlib.org/dlib/july00/staples/07staples.html). It is a protocol for a digital library system first designed conceptually by the Digital Library Research Group at Cornell University. It was implemented for the first time on a testbed basis by the University of Virginia Library's Digital Library Research and Development Department. This has led to the current Mellon Foundation-funded full development of the system for implementation in 2002 by the University of Virginia and Cornell University, and due for teseting by a consortium of institutions including Oxford University, King's College London, New York University, Indian University, Tufts, and the Library of Congress.

The basic model is one of integration and flexibility. Rather than many different web resources using different systems, the digital library integrates all these various resources of different media and different databases into a single integrated architecture. This entails powerful searching facilities across these different resources, standard interfaces, and in general built in interoperability across resources. This is further reinforced by using standard classification systems across the entire library, as well as the integrated presence of collections, references and tools. In addition, there is maximum flexibility of the data and resources contained by the digital library. Instead of resources being locked into one software system, or one style of presentation, everything - whether a text, a map, image, video, audio recording or database record - sits in the system as an independent, discrete object. These objects then can be used in different ways, as well as combined and detached from each other in accordance with different software functions and needs.

2. The content basis: Collections, Reference, Community, Tools and Education

The digital library in our model is divided into five domains of resources termed Collections, Reference, Community, Tools and Education upon the model of the traditional library, but each redesigned to reflect the transformative possibilities of a fully digital library.

"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 four overarching types of such collections:

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.

Collections include the 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.

"Reference" is the equivalent of a reference room in a traditional library, where users can find bibliographical references, consult dictionaries and so forth. It contains standard reference resources, including a bibliography, encyclopedia, gazetteer, dictionary, web links to other digital resources, and rosters of contemporary people and organizations involved in the field. The reference resources will be fully integrated with the collections, so that users at any point within the Library can look up a term, person, place or movement. All reference resources incorporate diverse media, and allow for extremely granular contributions as well as extremely detailed contributions. In addition, each is searchable by multiple criteria. The resources are all collaboratively built by international teams of scholars over the Web, and enhanced in an ongoing and daily fashion. Thus each area - dictionary, bibliography, etc. - consists of multiple components and projects managed by different scholars and librarians. For example, the bibliography has a series of thematic bibliographies that can be viewed separately or in an integrated fashion.

Bibliographical resources are provided in an online system that allows various scholars and librarians to manage particular subjects. The Encyclopedia project facilitates essay length studies of subjects grouped into different classes, such as terms, individuals, places, movements, and organizations. The places and times section provides more direct access to place names and descriptive information about those places, as well as chronologies and periodizations of Tibetan history. The dictionary is an online lexical resource for colloquial and literary Tibetan language It aims to provide detailed documentation of the historical occurrence of terms in diverse texts along the lines of the Oxford English Dictionary. Community provides users with an interactive roster of the community of scholars, students, librarians and archivists in the field. These rosters include information about the scholarly activities and publications of these figures for public searching and consultation. Resource Links organizes information and access to other projects and resources outside of the Library with a particular focus on digital and Internet based initiatives, thus representing a type of bibliography of digital projects. All resources are grouped together under the broad rubrics of Community, Collections, Reference, Tools and Education, as well as into subareas within each rubric.

"Tools" in the traditional library include interactive catalogs on computer work stations, microfilm readers, photocopiers and so forth to allow users to search and access its collections, as well as in limited ways also compile their own collections of information. Similarly, the digital library provides integrated software systems, tools and fonts in general to enable users to work with the collections with search and access procedures considerably more powerful than the traditional library. In particular, though, the digital library, goes far beyond the limited traditional tools of a library in its enabling of users to creatively interact with the digital collections and reference materials, as well as generate new user-defined collections for their own private purposes. The simplest level of functionality includes extraction of images and composing sequenced slide shows on line, while more advanced features are, for example, the ability to make HTML pages drawing upon library resources, compile private dictionaries, create new videos from segments of existing videos and so forth.This site also provides a suite of Tibetan fonts along with software developed by the THDL that enhances the use of these fonts both in word processors and on the Web. Together these tools aim to help other projects and individuals take advantage of technical work done by the Library, as well as provide a way to facilitate communication, exchange, interoperability and project building among all scholars, students and others interested in Tibet and the Himalayan regions. In particular, the Library is committed to developing digital tools to assist the teaching of Tibetan and Himalayan languages, literatures, environments and cultures. The evolving multilingual capacity of the digital library system also offers the promise of a single integrated library that serves different communities with distinct language bases, as well as promote communication between them.

"Education" represents an innovative extension of the library into a non-traditional space, namely the dynamic center of the classroom. The Education area primarily publishes modules for instructional programs in different areas of Tibetan Studies, with a particular but not exclusive emphasis on creative programs directly drawing upon the resources of digital technology and the Web. These modules ultimately aim not only to serve higher education, but also extend into the K-12 educational levels. In addition, they aim to serve remote education needs of the populace as a whole interested to further their knowledge for either professional or personal reasons. The Education area also highlights specific case studies and examples of student work in Tibetan Studies using technology. Finally, this area of the library also disseminates elements of the Tools area that facilitate the incorporation of technology, digital content, and Web resources into the classroom on the part of teachers and students alike.

3. The communal basis: The Information Community

Schools are by definition communities organized around knowledge. Our vision of the digital library is built upon the commitment to the central importance of community in the creation, refinement, and dissemination of knowledge. We thus see the digital library as servicing a broadly conceived "information community", and using knowledge to help create and sustain communities that help bridge the various divides that characterize the world. We believe one of the most central virtues of the use of digital technology is its ability not only to transform creation of, and access to, knowledge, but also in its extraordinary ability to transform the communal basis and use of knowledge. It is a dimension the Web has intimated from its beginning, yet in most fails failed to yet deliver.

We believe technology can be, and should be, used to help create communities across disciplines, across the scholarly/popular divide, and across cultures. Overall, it involves a radical re-envisioning of the scholar from a solitary producer of specialized knowledge, to a more community-based vision of the scholar. This means scholars collaborating in terms of the communal generation of knowledge, and also being more responsive and accessible to the various communities in which s/he is embedded. The same applies to individual institutions, which have tended to pursue their own institutional aims in isolation, and be skeptical of consortium arrangements or other types of close coordination with other institutions.

The Digital Library aims to use technology to promote an integrated environment in which publishing can be as granular or as expansive as a scholar is ready to produce, and multiple scholars in far flung areas of the world can work together on joint resources in intimate, and constantly coordinated fashion. The digital library thus sees itself as a type digital publication environment. This is based on a series of collaborative ventures at the library's heart, which multiple scholars and projects work on in an ongoing fashion. Individual projects are then hung off these joint resources at various points. What is exceptional is that the library not only publishes work, but also archives it for long term access; it not only allows for book length publications, but also publications of a single sentence; and it allows for extensive media forms to be integrated with textual analysis. In addition publications from different disciplines sit side by side in integrated fashion; a single click can change the language of presentation, or shift from a scholarly presentation to a popular one. Finally, reference works are perfectly integrated with collections, so that users can go from a major essay to the dictionary, to a bibliographic reference, to a gazetteer entry, and then back to the essay again.

In this regard, we are a committed member of the Tibetan and Himalayan Information Community, an initiative hosted by the University of Virginia to promote and support community relations within Tibetan Studies with a special focus on digital initiatives. It offers a digital portal to articulate, support and integrate the multiple communities of agents involved with the creation, production, and dissemination of knowledge of any type about Tibet and the Himalayas. The digital library is centrally about people, collections and tools, which together constitute an information community bound together by a common concern for knowledge on a particular subject. The term "Information Community" represents our vision, partially utopian and partially pragmatic, of communities organized around knowledge, and knowledge organized around communities. We are beset by the multiple fragmentations which currently govern both the diverse types of agents of knowledge - fieldworkers, media specialists, technicians, scholars, editors, publishers, distributors, librarians, readers, and others - and the diverse types of domains of knowledge - disciplinary, cultural, linguistic, national, specialized, popular, and others. This fragmentation damages the quality and type of knowledge produced in contemporary times, as well as renders the creators and distributors of knowledge unresponsive to the multiple communities to which they are morally and practically obligated. New Web technologies enable us to uniquely meet these challenges in order to simultaneously enhance knowledge and community, thereby maintaining intellectual and moral. An intelligent and sustained use of these technologies allows us to usher in a new era of knowledge that is profoundly interdisciplinary and collaborative in character, as well as providing unprecedented access.

We aim to promote communication, mutual support networks, and long term integration between distinct projects and organizations of diverse types and national bases. We are committed to the deep interrelation of knowledge and community at all levels, and in particular to the balance between the international and the local in knowledge, community and their integration. Given that our chosen field of endeavor is a particular region of the world, we are also particularly concerned to help empower residents of that region as agents of knowledge in the fullest sense both in the creation and utilization of knowledge. All of the Community's digital facilities are fully available to participating organizations (contact us). Community is structured into three chief areas - community, communication and resources.

The Benefits of a Community and the Importance of Standards

There are downsides to community involvement of course, which can summed up in terms of restrictions and time. Every community is based upon adherence to standards, which in turn allow the community to be a community, and accomplish communal aims. For example our traffic system – and hence our ability to use rapid transport – is based upon simple standards such as the stop light. We all agree to stop at a red light, and go on a green light; with this simple standard, and our communal adherence to it, we are able to rely upon a relatively safe and powerful rapid transportation system. The truth is stopping at red lights is time consuming, and at times highly irritating; and yet we do it because the benefits outweigh the costs.

Digital initiatives are no different, and rely upon systematic development of standards, and creation of communities that adhere to them. The development of such standards, and standard-based solutions is costly and time consuming. Adherence to these standards on the part of participants can also be time consuming to learn, and implement. In doing so, one can quickly thirst for just throwing up some quick presentation that looks flashy and extensive with little work. To begin with, THDL aims to help minimize costs by coordinating standards and standards-based development, and provide these systems to all participants for free. In this way participant organizations and scholars are able to focus on content and analysis rather than sending massive funds and time building up technical infrastructure from the ground up. More importantly, however, are the great benefits of standards adherence: