[INDOLOGY] Suggestions for improving services of Asiatic Society, Kolkata

[jmdelire]

Very strange, indeed,

I visited the Asiatic Society in 2009 and received everything I ordered 
100%.
On the other hand, there are libraries outside of India which have this 
policy : the department of the British Library which was anciently the 
India Office Library prevented me, some years ago, to take a complete 
xeroxcopy of Garrett and Guleri's The Jaipur Observatory and its 
Builder. I was authorized to copy something between a third and a half 
(I don't exactly remember) so that I had to do it in two or three 
visits. Very convenient.

Best,

J.M.Delire

Le 17.02.2018 01:36, Dominik Wujastyk via INDOLOGY a écrit :
> Dear Deepro,
> 
> I did not know about the AS's "30%" rule.  Administrative slowness is
> one thing, but the 30% rule is simply unacceptable.  No professional
> library outside India has such a policy, as far as I know.  And it is
> clearly an attack on academic freedom.  The 30% rule prevents the
> true growth of knowledge, which has always been the main mission of
> the Asiatic Society.
> 
> The managers of the AS need to understand that their manuscripts only
> have value when a scholar studies them.  If they lie unread on the
> shelf, they are dead.  The super-human efforts made by the great
> pandits and manuscript scribes of the past to pass their wisdom to us
> today is being blocked by this unacceptable limitation.
> 
> Best,
> 
> Dominik
> 
> ​--
> 
> Professor Dominik Wujastyk [2]
> ​,​
> Singhmar Chair in Classical Indian Society and Polity
> ​,​
> 
> Department of History and Classics [3]
> ​,​University of Alberta, Canada
> ​.​
> 
> South Asia at the U of A:
>  ​sas.ualberta.ca​ [4]
> ​​
> 
> On 16 February 2018 at 03:06, Deepro Chakraborty via INDOLOGY
> <indology at list.indology.info> wrote:
> 
>> Thank you so much for sharing your experience with me. I will convey
>> these concerns to the authority. Let's hope for the best.
>> 
>> Sincerely,
>> Deepro. 
>> 
>> On Mon, Feb 12, 2018 at 8:48 PM, Deepro Chakraborty
>> <chakrabortydeepro at gmail.com> wrote:
>> 
>>> Hello All,
>>> 
>>> I was informally asked to give some suggestions for an upgrade of
>>> the services of the Asiatic Society, Kolkata. I never visited
>>> their library and did not have any experience of collecting copies
>>> of manuscript materials from this institute. Some of my friends
>>> who were looking for manuscripts in this institute had pathetic
>>> experiences. 
>>> 
>>> The conditions of these south Asian libraries are often similar.
>>> Therefore, some general suggestions would also be useful.    
>>> 
>>> If you have any suggestion for improving their services I would be
>>> glad to forward your message (it can be anonymous if you want) to
>>> the authority. 
>>> 
>>> Sincerely,
>>> Deepro Chakraborty
>>> PhD candidate
>>> Department of History and Classics,
>>> University of Alberta. 
>> 
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> 
> Links:
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> [2] http://ualberta.academia.edu/DominikWujastyk
> [3] http://historyandclassics.ualberta.ca/
> [4] http://sas.ualberta.ca/
> 
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