Google to rescue India's fragile cultural patrimony ...

[Timothy Lubin]

I confess to having fallen behind in reading the Indology list messages,
but in case no one else has taken note, the following linked article in
the "Chronicle of Higher Education" should be of interest to many of
us:
 
http://chronicle.com/wiredcampus/article/2082/google-to-digitize-ancient-texts-at-university-in-india
 =  
http://tinyurl.com/ysjsas 
 
It begins as follows:
"May 21, 2007Google to Digitize Ancient Texts at University in India
Google has agreed to digitize some 800,000 books and manuscripts at the
University of Mysore, in Karnataka, India, the Indo-Asian News Service
reported. Some of the documents are written on palm leaves, and some on
paper. Among them are India*s first political treatise, the Arthasastra,
dating from the fourth century BC."
and so on...
This is just the latest phases of Google's plans to digitize all human
cultural artifacts.  Many of us have taken advantage of the large and
growing number of out-of-copyright Indological (and other) classics
freely available for download in PDF from http://books.google.com , with
human drones working around the clock at several major university
libraries scanning in books.  Next stop: the manuscript archives.
 
Tim
Timothy Lubin
Associate Professor, Department of Religion
Director, East Asian Studies Program
Washington and Lee University
Lexington, Virginia  USA

lubint at wlu.edu   |   http://home.wlu.edu/~lubint 

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