Rare Indian books in Britain’s major digitisation plan
LONDON: The British Library and several institutions in India and Britain have come together for a major project that involves the digitisation of thousands of books published over two centuries, between 1714 and 1914, and making them freely available online.
The project, called Two Centuries of Indian Print, is to be carried out in partnership with School of Cultural Texts and Records (SCTR) of Jadavpur University, Srishti Institute of Art, Design and Technology, the School of Oriental and African Studies, working with the National Library of India, the National Mission on Libraries, and other institutions in India.
Many of the books to be digitised were published in colonial Calcutta, which had emerged as the largest centre of print culture outside Europe and north America by the early nineteenth century. Announcing the pilot project, the British Library said the collection held by the library spans at least 22 South Asian languages and millions of pages. Many of the books are unique and many are also in delicate condition due to their age.
The pilot project will digitise 1,000 books in Bengali, amounting to 200,000 pages, as well as enhancing the catalogue records of more than 2,000 titles to automate searching and aid discovery by researchers.
Also planned are major engagement initiatives to stimulate digital scholarship and collaboration, as well as building skills and digital research capacity with partner institutions in India, the library said.
Roly Keating, the library’s chief executive, said: “By digitising some of the riches held in our South Asian printed collections, we want to enable people all over the world to appreciate India’s great cultural heritage in new and innovative ways”.
“In India itself, the National Virtual library of India is ushering in a new era for digital research – this exciting project will make more than a million pages of historic content available to researchers in the subcontinent,” Keating added.