Tibetan and Himalayan Digital Library
Encyclopedia
The Tibetan and Himalayan Library (THL), formerly the Tibetan and Himalayan Digital Library (THDL), is a multimedia guide and digital library
hosted by the University of Virginia
focused on the languages, history and geography of Tibet
and the Himalayas
.
Library and the Institute for Advanced Technology in the Humanities
, using the innovative FEDORA
(Flexible Extensible Digital Object Repository Architecture) system. Content includes publications, research resources, language learning materials, and a gazetteer.
THDL provides "an integrated environment for the digital publication of many diverse academic projects connected with Tibet and the Himalayan region".
The structure of THDL consists of five overarching domains: Collections, Reference, Community, Tools, and Education.
Content of THDL is in English, Tibetan
, Nepali
, Dzongkha and Chinese languages. Most content in the digital library is published under the THDL Public License For Digital Texts.
The project is run by an international team of scholars from universities and private organizations around the world.
THDL hosts the Journal of the International Association of Tibetan Studies
(JIATS), a freely available online, peer-reviewed English language
academic journal
focusing on Tibetan studies
.
font for the Tibetan script
based on a design by Tony Duff which was updated and adapted for rendering Unicode
Tibetan text by the Tibetan and Himalayan Library project at the University of Virginia and released under the GNU General Public License
. The font supports a particularly extensive set of conjunct ligatures for Tibetan.
Digital library
A digital library is a library in which collections are stored in digital formats and accessible by computers. The digital content may be stored locally, or accessed remotely via computer networks...
hosted by the University of Virginia
University of Virginia
The University of Virginia is a public research university located in Charlottesville, Virginia, United States, founded by Thomas Jefferson...
focused on the languages, history and geography of Tibet
Tibet
Tibet is a plateau region in Asia, north-east of the Himalayas. It is the traditional homeland of the Tibetan people as well as some other ethnic groups such as Monpas, Qiang, and Lhobas, and is now also inhabited by considerable numbers of Han and Hui people...
and the Himalayas
Himalayas
The Himalaya Range or Himalaya Mountains Sanskrit: Devanagari: हिमालय, literally "abode of snow"), usually called the Himalayas or Himalaya for short, is a mountain range in Asia, separating the Indian subcontinent from the Tibetan Plateau...
.
Overview
THDL was established in 2000 in association with the University of VirginiaUniversity of Virginia
The University of Virginia is a public research university located in Charlottesville, Virginia, United States, founded by Thomas Jefferson...
Library and the Institute for Advanced Technology in the Humanities
Institute for Advanced Technology in the Humanities
The Institute for Advanced Technology in the Humanities is a research unit of the University of Virginia, USA. Its goal is to explore and develop information technology as a tool for scholarly humanities research. To that end, IATH provide Fellows with consulting, technical support, applications...
, using the innovative FEDORA
Fedora (software)
Fedora is a modular architecture built on the principle that interoperability and extensibility is best achieved by the integration of data, interfaces, and mechanisms as clearly defined modules...
(Flexible Extensible Digital Object Repository Architecture) system. Content includes publications, research resources, language learning materials, and a gazetteer.
THDL provides "an integrated environment for the digital publication of many diverse academic projects connected with Tibet and the Himalayan region".
The structure of THDL consists of five overarching domains: Collections, Reference, Community, Tools, and Education.
Content of THDL is in English, Tibetan
Tibetan language
The Tibetan languages are a cluster of mutually-unintelligible Tibeto-Burman languages spoken primarily by Tibetan peoples who live across a wide area of eastern Central Asia bordering the Indian subcontinent, including the Tibetan Plateau and the northern Indian subcontinent in Baltistan, Ladakh,...
, Nepali
Nepali language
Nepali or Nepalese is a language in the Indo-Aryan branch of the Indo-European language family.It is the official language and de facto lingua franca of Nepal and is also spoken in Bhutan, parts of India and parts of Myanmar...
, Dzongkha and Chinese languages. Most content in the digital library is published under the THDL Public License For Digital Texts.
The project is run by an international team of scholars from universities and private organizations around the world.
THDL hosts the Journal of the International Association of Tibetan Studies
Journal of the International Association of Tibetan Studies
The Journal of the International Association of Tibetan Studies ISSN is a freely available online, peer-reviewed English language academic journal focusing on Tibetan studies...
(JIATS), a freely available online, peer-reviewed English language
English language
English is a West Germanic language that arose in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England and spread into what was to become south-east Scotland under the influence of the Anglian medieval kingdom of Northumbria...
academic journal
Academic journal
An academic journal is a peer-reviewed periodical in which scholarship relating to a particular academic discipline is published. Academic journals serve as forums for the introduction and presentation for scrutiny of new research, and the critique of existing research...
focusing on Tibetan studies
Tibetology
Tibetology refers to the study of things related to Tibet, including its history, religion, language, politics and the collection of Tibetan articles of historical, cultural and religious significance...
.
Tibetan Machine Uni
Tibetan Machine Uni is an open source OpenTypeOpenType
OpenType is a format for scalable computer fonts. It was built on its predecessor TrueType, retaining TrueType's basic structure and adding many intricate data structures for prescribing typographic behavior...
font for the Tibetan script
Tibetan script
The Tibetan alphabet is an abugida of Indic origin used to write the Tibetan language as well as the Dzongkha language, Denzongkha, Ladakhi language and sometimes the Balti language. The printed form of the alphabet is called uchen script while the hand-written cursive form used in everyday...
based on a design by Tony Duff which was updated and adapted for rendering Unicode
Unicode
Unicode is a computing industry standard for the consistent encoding, representation and handling of text expressed in most of the world's writing systems...
Tibetan text by the Tibetan and Himalayan Library project at the University of Virginia and released under the GNU General Public License
GNU General Public License
The GNU General Public License is the most widely used free software license, originally written by Richard Stallman for the GNU Project....
. The font supports a particularly extensive set of conjunct ligatures for Tibetan.
Sources
- Review of the Tibetan and Himalayan Library at World History Sources
- The Tibetan and Himalayan Digital Library: A New Model for the Nexus of Knowledge and Community for Academic Study of Other Cultures
- THDL Project Overview
- In Brief: The Tibetan and Himalayan Digital Library- D-Lib Magazine,Volume 8, Number 5, May 2002 [ISSN 1082-9873]