The mission of the Tibetan Buddhist Resource Center, Inc. is to promote research and scholarship in Tibetan Buddhism and advance the preservation of the Tibetan cultural heritage by making its literary tradition widely available in the form of digital images.

With the exodus of Tibetans from their homeland, their ancient wisdom was dispersed into the world. The precious texts and the oral traditions they brought with them gave new impetus to Tibetan and Buddhist studies in the West. This unique tradition is particularly rich as it includes not only the Tibetans' original contributions but also the traditional works of the great Indian scholars and masters, which were systematically documented and preserved in Tibet. Tibet's extensive literature contains fully developed branches of knowledge that covers everything from philosophy, medicine, art, psychology, astrology, and mathematics to alchemy, poetics, and history.

During the 1960s and 1970s, the US Library of Congress sponsored the wholesale reprinting of thousands of Tibetan texts gathered from Tibetan communities in India, Nepal, and elsewhere. These texts, which were liberally supplied to subscribing American institutions through the US Government's PL-480 program, formed the essential base for the ever-expanding growth of Tibetan Studies that began in the 1970s. As a result Tibetologists have become able to study such diverse topics as Tibetan art, politics, history, linguistics, religion, medicine, etc. through use of this massive body of primary Tibetan source materials previously unavailable outside Tibet.

Preserving the texts using the latest digital imaging technology will be done both in the U.S and in India. A coordinated effort requires a robust digital imaging system that is both sensitive to the quality of the texts and the requirements for high volume batch scanning. While 5000 texts have been scanned to date, the development of a uniform and reliable imaging system is currently underway to handle the challenges that a substantial increase in the size of the image archive has created.

TBRC’s mission is becoming more visible and other organizations are turning to TBRC for assistance in the use of digital technology. In order to facilitate and train other organizations in the use of digital technology for the preservation of texts, TBRC is developing standardized systems that include software, hardware and manuals, for the use of these organizations. With the development of expertise in this area, TBRC will hope to propagate the use of digital technology for the preservation of texts worldwide.

Western methods of cataloguing Tibetan texts do not provide an adequate level of detail, or granularity, to a referenced work. Collected works – which may contain up to 230 volumes, 700 pages each, of the writings of a particular master or tradition– are catalogued with a single bibliographic record to the entire work. Currently, researching a collected work is like attempting to use an encyclopedia without the benefit of an alphabetical arrangement of the topics.

TBRC’s online reference tools will greatly extend and enhance access to
the content of texts. One such tool under development is an encyclopedic database that will make it possible to research scholarly information to find bibliographic details, and will include extensive biographical and geographical information about an author. An interrelated tool will provide direct links from the researched references to e-books in the Center’s digital collection and from other input works.

The encyclopedic database builds on the scholarship initiated by E. Gene Smith more than 35 years ago as he began to catalogue the PL-480 Library of Congress Tibetan collection. The database captures colophon information, long and short titles, title pages, tables of contents, page extents, and chapter descriptions, authors’ names and their variations, biographical and topic indexes, and geographic locations referenced by latitude and longitude coordinates as well as by local, county, prefecture, and province levels. The scope of this undertaking is prodigious, requiring considerable erudition and attention to detail.

The final reference tool will make it possible to cross-index all of this information (using Sanskrit diacritics, Tibetan scripts, and Roman transliteration) with digitized e-books. The reference tool will be completely compatible with those of the US Library of Congress such that the entire community including other libraries can use the database and the digital texts collaboratively on the Internet.

TBRC is providing bibliographic and research services and is already known as a valued resource to researchers and institutions worldwide. The Executive Director regularly receives and responds to requests for bibliographic and historical information.

In addition, TBRC is pursuing collaboration on related projects that include collaboration with the University of Virginia on a computerized encyclopedia of Tibetan history and religion, and work with the Tibetan Digital Archives, Electronic Cultural Atlas Initiative, and the Cultural Atlas of China.

TBRC is in an ideal position to promote a standard of excellence for Tibetan translations. With the use of its reference tools, TBRC hopes to increase access to scholarship and through its advocacy of collaborative efforts, the most accurate and elegant translations will become available.

By uniting its scholarly mission with its technological mission, TBRC is promoting the development of Tibetan computer technologies. TBRC will work with other institutions, such as the National Digital Library Program of the US Library of Congress, and also sponsor cooperation among scholars in the field of digital library development and technology standards. The Center will test the most promising solutions and create flexible reference tools for the Tibetan literary heritage. Using internationally accepted standards, TBRC will develop software interfaces to allow connections on the Internet between users, other libraries, and electronic archives.

Contract consultants might include a web developer, a database developer or a development consultant.

As much as is possible, members of the staff and consulting team, and volunteers and interns will have knowledge of the Tibetan and Chinese
languages, and Tibetan literature, culture, history, and spiritual traditions.

Budget & Funding Keys to the success of the Tibetan Buddhist Resource Center’s mission are good planning and suitable staffing, technical infrastructure, and resource development. The scope of the project, including the bibliographic and research service, the continuing collection of textual materials, the creation of the encyclopedic database, the technological development of the digital archives, integrating the reference and search tools to international standards, and the mounting of these tools seamlessly on the Internet, is projected to require funding of approximately $2 million for the first three years of a ten-year project.

While initial funding has secured a solid base, the promulgation of TBRC’s work requires further infusions of capital. In these first three years, the Center has equipped an office with computers, printers, and scanners and set up a local area network; created software infrastructure for the database; developed a search engine and mounted on the Internet; linked the database on the web to our archives of digital texts; input twenty-five percent of the total data and make significant progress in digitizing texts. All this is in addition to responding on an ongoing basis to the requests of clients, pursuing international discovery and collection of the texts, and facilitating cooperation among all those interested in the field has been done by a small group of paid and volunteer positions

To begin full operations, the need of funding is urgent. We have scanned 5000 volumes to date and are beginning to develop process control standards. In order to purchase equipment and hire a staff of dedicated professionals, the Center is now actively seeking funding.

While a broad base of support will be sought, the infrastructure requirements of the Center’s early years call for initial and substantial multi-year gifts.

We welcome your contribution to the Center at this critical moment. (Supporting TBRC)