Maharashtra allots Rs. 5 crore for ambitious project.
The Maharashtra government has flagged off a
programme to digitise over 1,00,000 books and 2,500 manuscripts, some of which
date back to the 12th century, at the 211-year-old Asiatic Society library in
Mumbai.
The digitisation programme was inaugurated by
Maharashtra Governor Ch. Vidyasagar Rao this week. Under the project, the
archives of the library will be digitised and saved in the form of CDs and
microfilms, which will be accessible to members, researchers, and scholars. The
Maharashtra government recently released a grant of Rs. 5 crore to the society
for the project.
Collection
of coins too
The library has a collection of 2,55,463
books and bound volumes of periodicals. As many as 15,000 of these books have
been categorised as rare and valuable, of which a few are even classified as
first editions. Some of the antique books include two volumes of Captain James
Cook’s A VoyageTowards the South Pole and Round the World (1777),
Galileo Linceo Galilei’s Dialogo (1632), Hermann Grassmann’s German
translation of Rig Veda (1876-77), Sir Walter Raleigh’s History of
the World (1836), William Shakespeare’s First Folio (1623).
Also available are John Gould’s The Birds
of Asia written in 1850-1883 and Hindostan, a French book written in
1821. Newspapers dating back to 1801 are stacked in neat books. Among the 3,000
manuscripts are the original 14th century Italian manuscript of Dante’s Divine
Comedy (1350) and the Suryasiddhanta with bhashya of Candelvara (Astronomy,
Sanskrit) that dates back to the 12th century. The library also has in its
collection of more than 12,000 coins the gold coin of Kumar Gupta, a gold muhar
of Akbar and coins of Shivaji Maharaj.
Asked if all books will be available online
post digitisation, Mr. Kale said: “We are facing challenges owing to the
copyright policy on some books so we are in talks on how to resolve it. In that
case, access to those digitised copies will be restricted to the library.”
Time-consuming
work
Society president S.G. Kaletold The Hindu
that one of the major benefits of the project was that the originals could be
preserved. “The online portal would also allow scholars access valuable
collections, thus allowing us to let the knowledge reach whoever is willing,”
Mr. Kale said. Attempts are being made to produce a catalogue of coins for easy
reference.
“The digitisation process involves scanning
over 14 lakh pages and will certainly take time,” Mr. Kale said.
The Asiatic Society of Bombay was founded by
Sir James Mackintosh, a lawyer, jurist and public figure in England, to
disseminate knowledge about the India and the Orient. Then known as the
Literary Society of Bombay, it met for the first time on November 26, 1804,
nearly two decades after Sir William Jones had set up the Asiatic Society of
Bengal. In 1826, the Literary Society merged with the Royal Asiatic Society of
Britain and Ireland, and four years later moved into the imposing facade of
Townhall with its tall pillars and the flight of stairs. In 1954, it ended its
128-year-long association with the Royal Asiatic Society.
Source | The Hindu | 11 August 2015
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