inofficial e-texts - interested???

[Kellner]

Still working on my directory of Tibetan/Buddhist/Indic Studies-resources on
the Internet, I noticed that I hardly know anything about available e-texts. I
am aware of the Ac at t@adhya at yi@ and various other texts at bcc.ac.uk, and
of Prof. Tokunaga's Mahabharata and Ramayana, but beyond that, I haven't
heard of any serious endeavours to make e-texts accessible. 

I myself use a number of e-texts in my own research, which is mainly
Buddhist prama at n@a. Just to give you an idea: Those e-texts include
Dharmaki at rti's Prama at n@ava at rttika (Miyasaka-ed.), ACIP's Tibetan
translation of PV, Dharmaki at rti's Hetubindu, his Prama at n@avinic at caya
I and II (and parts of III), his Nya at yabindu, parts of Dharmottara's
Nya at yabindut@i at ka@, parts of Dharmottara's
Prama at n@avinic at cayat@i at ka@, Jj at a@nac at ri@mitra's
Ic at varasa@dhanadu at s@an at a, versions of the Vaic at es@ikasu at tras and the
Nya at yasu@tras, the Nya at yabha@s at yam, the most of Kuma at rila's
C at lokava@rttikam, considerable parts of Bhartr at hari's
Va at kyapadi@ya...ad.lib. 

Most of these materials were given to me "in private", i.e. from benevolent
colleagues who had either typed them themselves (or payed some of their
students to type them..), or who had gotten them from other, also benevolent,
colleagues. Also, most of these resources are by no means "critical editions"
- they are simply transcripts from existent editions, whose main motivation
is to facilitate the search for certain terms or quotations. Some of them might
not even be spell-checked, but still, they serve a purpose. (Although, of
course, spell-checked files are preferable)

Judging from my own experience, I would assume that there is quite a broad
"inofficial" channel for e-texts in various fields of Indology (and Tibetology,
for that matter). And, I would like these channels to become at least a bit
more public. It is always a major source of frustration, when I discover that
I took the pains of typing something in (my wrists hate it, and the scanners
around are simply not good enough), although somebody else had done the
same work already, only I didn't know of it. This anxiety is, somehow, a
major source of paranoia: Just imagine that somebody might be ruining his
wrists right now typing the very same text that you would like to see on your
screen...

What I dream of (not literally) is some kind of (non-profit, of course) "stock
exchange" for such inofficial e-texts. I could imagine setting up a list along
the lines of "person x typed in text y", and if somebody looks for text y, he
or she could simply e-mail person x and obtain it. I am somewhat hesitant to
go further in terms of electronic publication, for I definitely do not want to
infringe any copyrights whatsoever. 

I think such a "stock exchange" could really facilitate a lot of people's work,
especially in the realm of tiring philological groundwork. 

Any suggestions welcome, 

Birgit Kellner
Institute for Indian Philosophy
University of Hiroshima