South Asia Resources

Beyond Books
By Philip McEldowney and Nawang Thokmey
Spring 2001

Music of India || Tibetan electonric dictionaries and etexts and the Bonpo Tanjur
Information Communities || Scholarly articles


Music! Geet! Gana! Songs! Three sets of South Asian music in 3 different formats have arrived and will be placed in the Music library. Five CDs of Rajasthani folk music, including one with traditional instruments and one with marriage songs, play out the variety of those region's melodic traditions. Four Bengali music cassettes present the songs of that region, including folk and mystical Baul songs. And third, there are 2 CDs of Hindi film music; one of them in the VCD format (Video CD) popular in India and other South Asian countries. Hear and see Alisha's "Made in India: on the "Best of Channel Hits" VCD; or hear Suram Nath play the Murla Been on the "Rajastani Desert Melodies" CD; or Sukhabilasa Barma sing Bengali folk songs from the "Bhaoyaiya" cassette. In addition, Ustad Sultan Khan plays the sarangi in a 1985 concert (music cassette).

Tibetan-English dictionaries and full-text titles are being networked so that University of Virginia researchers may log in and access these electronic databases. These include the Surat Chandra Das' dictionary and Tony Duff's Illuminator dictionary; as well as the texts of Gampopa's Jewel Ornament of Liberation, Bodhisatvacaryavatara and Madhyamakavatara critical editions. And more. Look for them soon in VIRGO. In addition TibetDoc Tibetan word-processor CD for Windows by Lotsawa Tony Duff is available in my (Nawang's) office if anyone wants to look at it.

We (at the University of Virginia) recently received the whole 320-volume collection of Bonpo Tanjur (bstan 'gyur) from Lhasa. It has been catalogued. The call number is T-TIB 27839739. It is located in the Tibetan cage. Also received are 55 Tibetan language and cultural books from India; all are available in VIRGO.

About Nar thang Tanjur (bstan 'gyur), so far we have received and catalogued a total of 83 volumes; others are on the way from New Delhi, India.

Please contact us - Nawang or Philip - if you have any Library questions or requests.

The Arts and Sciences libraries are actively involved in two on-going projects -- one, in defining and promoting Information Communities, and two, in supporting the academic departments in promotion of the publication of their scholarly research in the new electronic environment. The Tibetan and Himalyan Digital Library The Tibetan and Himalyan Digital Library is a good example of an Information Community that is already up and running. Other possible InfoComms are American Studies, Poetry, Architecture, and the Virginia Environment. [Demo web page]

Faced with the crunch or crisis of rising journal prices and stagnant library budgets, researchers are considering several approaches. Making all scholarly research articles available free for all, all the time is the eventual goal of the Self-Archiving (Eprints) and Open Archives initatives, which have been developing software and web programs over the last years and are now fully available.� Scholars can now start adding their pre-publication and publication articles to electronic archives (the Eprints program). The articles will be automatically indexed and made interoperable on the web (the Open Archives program).� Two other resources for faculty and librarians, concerned with reclaiming their scholarly publications, are called "Create Change" and "Declarining Independence". The University libraries support these on-going changes in scholarly communication�among the faculty and researchers.

Please contact us - Nawang or Philip - if you have any Library questions or requests.


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South Asia Resources

Webber Philip McEldowney
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