• SARAI Demonstration -David Magier

• Library Web Pages and Online Resources for South Asia Studies -Merry Burlingham and Alan Grosenheider
• Digital South Asia Library Demonstration -Rebecca Moore
• Digital Asia Library Demonstration -Rebecca Payne?

• Digital Dictionaries of South Asia -Rebecca Moore
• Online teaching case on Shah Bano -Laura Dudley Jenkins
• Virtual Village project -Peter Gottschalk

SARAI (South Asia Resource Access on the Internet) is a large subject-structured collection of hand-picked links to select internet resources that are judged to be of value for the study of South Asia in all disciplines. SARAI, which is edited and maintained as a South Asian Studies portal on the web by Dr. David Magier (South Asia Librarian at Columbia University) has been in operation for 10 years, and incorporates specific selections, suggestions, and input of content from South Asia scholars and institutions around the world. It has been designated the official World Wide Web Virtual Library for South Asia, and has been recognized by the NEH as "one of the best sites on the internet for the teaching of humanities". Dr. Magier presents a demonstration of SARAI main features and functions.

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Merry Burlingham and Alan Grosenheider will review some of the databases that are available at various research libraries as well as electronic resources that are free which have some South Asian content but are not necessarily South Asian focused.

The Digital South Asia Library (DSAL) is a global collaborative effort to make important and rare resources available to the international community. DSAL has acquired permission to digitize and scan an array of important resources from a variety of institutions, thereby making access to rare materials a reality for scholars worldwide. The component parts of the project include maps, statistics, bibliographies, union lists, indexes, photographs, books and journals as well as a reference collection that is strong in pedagogical tools for South Asian language learning.
http://wwwcrl.uchicago.edu/dsal

Digital Asia Library: a project that provides access to high quality Asian Internet resources through a Web-based catalog. Based at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, the Digital Asia Library is a cooperative effort of The Ohio State University Libraries, the University of Minnesota-Twin Cities Libraries, and the University of Wisconsin-Madison Libraries. It uses the expertise of area specialists and librarians to select and organize Asian Internet resources for research in the social sciences. Payne will discuss the collection, selection and cataloging of resources, and project challenges and demonstrate use of the online catalog.
http://digitalasia.library.wisc.edu

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The Digital Dictionaries of South Asia (DDSA) Project is a collaborative effort to widen access to South Asian Language Dictionaries. Established dictionaries for each of the twenty-six modern literary languages of South Asia will be mounted on the web for free and open access.

DDSA is funded through a Department of Education grant awarded to the South Asia Language and Area Center at University of Chicago, Columbia University, and the Triangle South Asia Consortium in North Carolina. A panel of language experts is identifying key dictionaries which currently exist in print for each of the twenty-six modern literary languages of South Asia. DDSA has also approached other funding bodies to support work for classical languages and modern minor languages, thereby increasing the scope and depth of the project. http://dsal.uchicago.edu/dictionaries

"Shah Bano: Muslim Women's Rights" is an interactive teaching case, freely available for use in classes in political science, women's studies, South Asian studies, or human rights. Part of Teaching Human Rights Online (honored by the American Political Science Association as this year's best website in political science), the Shah Bano case allows students to put themselves in the place of decision makers in the context of a recent moral and political dilemma involving Muslim Personal Law and women's rights.
The presentation will include a brief demonstration and discussion of pedagogical issues and strategies. Teaching Human Rights Online (THRO) http://oz.uc.edu/thro includes several other cases which may be of interest to S.A. conference participants, particularly one on terrorism and human rights in India (Prime Minister Rao's Dilemma) and another on forced labor in Burma (Slavery in Burma? Doe v. Unilocal).

"A Virtual Village" is an interactive website based upon a contemporary north Indian village. Virtual Reality technology and interactive design allows students to explore the religious, linguistic, and cultural richness and complexity of contemporary rural India. Moreover, the site seeks also to invite a more general discussion of issues of cultural representation and interreligious understanding. http://www.colleges.org/~village/

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URLs:


• South Asia Resource Access on the Internet
  http://www.columbia.edu/cu/lweb/indiv/southasia/cuvl/
• Library Web Pages and Online Resources for South Asia Studies
  http://www.lib.washington.edu/Southasia/20oct01.html
• Digital South Asia Library (DSAL) http://wwwcrl.uchicago.edu/dsal
• Digital Asia Library http://digitalasia.library.wisc.edu
• Digital Dictionaries of South Asia (DDSA) http://dsal.uchicago.edu/dictionaries
• Shah Bano Case http://oz.uc.edu/thro/shahbano/index.htm
• Teaching Human Rights Online (THRO) http://oz.uc.edu/thro
• A Virtual Village http://www.colleges.org/~village/
• CONSALD http://www.lib.virginia.edu/area-studies/SouthAsia/Lib/consald.html