An Integrated and Georeferenced Digital Library Initiative for Tibetan and Himalayan Studies
David F Germano
Department of Religious Studies
We propose to systematically develop the Tibetan and Himalayan Digital Library
www.thdl.org THDL with a focus on ongoing support of multiple projects that access,
collect, organize, preserve, and widely disseminate information on the world region of
Tibet and the Himalayas, which extends across five nations and many cultural, linguistic
and environmental zones.
THDL aims to address our nation's teaching and research
needs in international education and foreign languages as it pertains this vital and vast
region. Its projects include a broad set of activities providing both intellectual access and
direct access to classical literature, Web sites, scholarship, audio-video recordings,
images, maps, people, organizations, and temporal periods.
As the holdings of
THDL on Tibet and the Himalayas exponentially increase across diverse formats and
disciplines all with common metadata, browsing formats, and search facilities they
will also be tightly integrated, in part through an innovative focus on spatial criteria. A
spatial focus will allow users to proceed from metadata on images, texts, audio-video,
maps, literature, essays and other THDL resources that specify place-based information
directly to Gazetteer entries on the relevant places. Utilizing the Gazetteer place IDs,
users will thus be able to see the place's variant names, latitude/longitude, administrative
location, basic historical and contemporary description, and feature type. They will
likewise have the means to spatially visualize the place on a GIS grid with various natural
and administrative layers. To enhance access, users will also be able to search the
Gazetteer for a given toponym, and then use the search results to view and access all of
THDL's holdings that are keyed to that place such as images, audio-video recordings,
texts, interpretative scholarship, and maps. The technical refinement of this system will
follow the model of our Scholar's Toolbox, where an integrated set of tools covers the
entire process from generation of data, processing, archiving and dissemination. Hand-in-hand
with this, we will also focus in particular on digitizing place-based information,
cataloging data according to place, and supporting place documentation projects.
Our use
of the Encoded Archival Description (EAD) XML DTD will generate a similar index of
historical and contemporary agents both individuals and organizations that will bind
together THDL's resources on the basis of agents. Thus all references to agents will be
dynamically hyperlinked to their descriptive entries, while those entries in turn will allow
users to inspect and retrieve all THDL resources associated with those agents. Finally this
four year period will also allow us to complete the process of integrating THDL fully into
the FEDORA digital library system, one of the world's leading initiatives in creating an
open source digital library system and based at the University of Virginia.
More information at thdl.org
Project Sponsored By: U.S. Dept. Of Ed. - Educational Res. & Improvement
Start Date: 10/1/2005
- End Date: 9/30/2010
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