The Hindu : New Delhi News : Proposal to set up electronic manuscript library

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Friday, Nov 02, 2007
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New Delhi

Proposal to set up electronic manuscript library

Special Correspondent

NEW DELHI: In a bid to archive the manuscripts tracked down by the National Manuscripts Mission in its four-and-a-half-year-long existence, the Indira Gandhi National Centre for the Arts (IGNCA) plans to create a National Electronic Manuscript Library.

This was informed by IGNCA Trust president Chinmaya R. Garekhan during a media briefing here on Thursday at the close of a four-day meeting of the representatives of 80 Manuscript Resource Centres and Manuscript Conservation Centres.

The proposed library will have an in-built provision for agreement with depositors for scholarly access, e-publishing and cyber-teaching; building a digital resource network with significant repositories of manuscripts; and to work for collation, comparison and reconstruction of material available across the nation and the globe on specific themes and subjects.

On the fate of the National Manuscripts Mission after its former director Sudha Gopalakrishnan put in her papers, IGNCA member-secretary K.K. Chakravarty said it would be incorporated with the Centre in the next six months. “Anyway, its term was for five years,” he pointed out; refusing to speak on the controversy surrounding the departure of Ms. Gopalakrishnan.

As for acquiring the manuscripts — scattered across the country in private collections — Mr. Chakravarty said the majority at the meeting was against any law to force people to part with them.

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