Fate of NCC

[Dominik Wujastyk]

Prof. Arjunwadkar makes several imporant points.

About the IGNCA:
The staff at the IGNCA are typing the contents of many ms catalogues into
a flat-file database (essentially a library catalogue system).  When I
visited IGNCA last year, I talked a lot about three issues.  1/ using a
relational model for storing the data; 2/ Accuracy of data input; 3/ The
importance of having a great deal of input from people who actually know a
lot about Sanskrit literature.

The data I saw, and I was kindly shown a great deal of printout as well as
having sessions at the terminal, was voluminous indeed, but rather
inaccurate, and inconsistent in names and titles.

In other words, it did not reflect the careful editorial standards
established for the NCC project by Raghavan, to which Prof. Arjunwadkar
rightly refers.

It is possible that the IGNCA data will be laundered in due course, but it
will be a very big job to make it as useful as it deserves to be.  I very
much hope they do undertake it.

So at present, I believe the NCC project is still worth completing, in
spite of the somewhat similar thrust of the work at the IGNCA, and in
spite of the fact that many catalogues have appeared since NCC closed its
files.

Has anyone been to IGNCA more recently, and had a look at the
catalogue-input work (CATCAT etc.)?

Prof. Arjunwadkar mentions UNESCO.  The bit of that organization which
would probably be relevant to the NCC is the "Memory of the World"
project (http://www.unesco.org/webworld/mdm/en/index_mdm.html).  This
project is already working with the Institute of Asian Studies in Madras.
However, although it is an excellent project, it is more of a
publicity program than a financial one.  As far as I know, the MOTW
programme helps institutions to raise awareness, set standards for work,
and so forth.  But funds have to be gathered from other sources.  Of
course, having the UNESCO imprimature would help this fundraising
enormously.

However, another point is that most of the MOTW projects are concerned
with orginal source documents.  NCC is a finding aid, not an actual
manuscript, of course.  Still, perhaps an argument could be made.

Is there another UNESCO program which might be relevant to NCC?

Dominik

--
Dominik Wujastyk
Founder, INDOLOGY list.