What Devanagari text would you most like as an e-text

[Birgit Kellner]

Jonathan Silk wrote:
> I have the impression that in addition to the materials publicly or
> semi-publicly available, there are also --perhaps substantial--materials
> privately input, perhaps in so-called legacy systems. It might be profitable
> to try to make an effort to bring such things into general circulation as
> well, even if this means a certain amount of conversion is also
> necessary--probably better than starting over. I have, for instance, heard
> that German scholars, perhaps those associated with the Turfan project(s),
> have a huge database of Buddhist Sanskrit materials, much of which is not
> otherwise, as far as I know, available, but that it resides in some
> dinosaur-era format... Moreover, of course, many people input things
> themselves, and circulate them to their friends and colleagues; if one is
> lucky enough to encounter such a person while in possession of a large hard
> drive... well, there must be a more systematic way to go about this.
>
> very best, jonathan
>
>   
In general, the response to Dominik's query suggests it would be 
worthwhile working towards an inventory of works that are already 
available electronically: either in searchable format or as image scans 
(the latter might be useful to know for people who'd like to produce 
searchable versions, which in some cases may work well with OCR). Even 
if the e-texts themselves are not accessible publicly, for whatever 
reasons (dinosaur format or copyright issues), it would be useful to 
know that they exist.

I believe it would be possible to gradually create such an inventory as 
a web database: collaborative, with users able to create an account and 
post information about texts that they have entered (and links to where 
they can be found, if possible), and ideally with a redactor who 
oversees the general accuracy of information and also keeps his or her 
eyes open and adds information on his/her own.

If individual e-text repositories also publish their new additions in a 
standardized format (an RSS feed), such information could also be 
processed automatically.

A combination of community effort, some redacting and entry on the part 
of a designated person, and automatized tools, might be a good way to 
keep the effort necessary to create such an inventory and keep it up to 
date within reasonable limits. It would also be a good way to make the 
best of the current situation, likely to continue, that there are, after 
all, a number of repositories (GRETIL, Buddhist canon, TITUS, SARIT, 
etc.) that keep growing and developing.

There is really no reason, I believe, why people should reduplicate the 
work of others. Especially when it's as tiresome as producing electronic 
texts.

All the best,

Birgit