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Annual Review: Library of Tibetan Works and Archives receives a new computer

Grant amount: £1,291 (in May, 2014)

In April last year, we were approached by the Library of Tibetan Works and Archives in Dharamsala as they were looking for help to buy a new computer for their Audio Visual Department.

Established in 1976, the department’s aim is to preserve recordings of contemporary and ancient Tibetan events as recalled by witnesses, scholars, refugees and other important figures in Tibetan history.

Karma Khedup with the new Mac
Karma Khedup with the new Mac

“Our archive has around 35,000 hours of recordings in audio and video tapes, which include many old and rare recordings. With passing time these recordings in the tapes lose their quality, so we digitize them first and later these digitized recordings will be edited.”

– Karma Khedup, Head of Audio Visual Department, LTWA

Digitising these old recordings is a much more reliable way of storing them. They can be watched or listened to over and over again without fear of damaging fragile tapes; they take less space to store and they can be easily catalogued and made accessible to Tibetans, researchers, professionals and scholars.

To complete the digitisation and editing process, the library requires good computers which will work well with modern editing and digitisation software and have a large amount of storage space. We are pleased to say that in May 2014 we were able to send a grant to cover the cost of a new Mac computer to meet the department’s requirements. Since purchasing the computer, the head of the department Karma Khedup reports that:

“We are very grateful to the Tibet Relief Fund for the financial support on the purchase of iMac. The system is very intuitive and helps in making our daily work more convenient. Since its purchase we have been digitising video and audio collection in our archive such as a seminar on Cosmology and Consciousness, a dialogue between scientist and Buddhist scholars, and a talk by Dr. Pema Dorjee on Tibetan Medicine and many more.”

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