It may amuse you to know that at a talk I gave for SALG at Cambridge in 1996, I finished with the following words:
Conclusion
Can a modern library afford to be left out?
What will happen if Cambridge, say, doesn’t digitize its world-class Buddhist manuscript collection?
Best,
Dominik Wujastyk
On 23 July 2012 15:56, Dominik Wujastyk <Dominik.Wujastyk@univie.ac.at> wrote:
Dear Dr Vergiani and colleagues,
What a wonderful resource you have created. It is hard to imagine a more useful or well-designed presentation of the Cambridge Skt MS materials. Thank you all! I look forward to the growth of this online repository.
This Cambridge resource is matched by the fine work being done at the "Penn in Hand" project at the University of Pennsylvania, that offers comparable facilities.
I hope librarians with Indic collections elsewhere are watching these developments. There is no reason for a library with a collection of Indic manuscripts not to be thinking very seriously about presenting their collections in such a manner. Collections that are not presented in some such a way obviously risk being marginalized as scholarly resources.
Best,
Dominik Wujastyk