India Times: Over 100 names added to database of heritage trees. “Paryavaran Sena, a non-profit organisation dedicated to environment protection, has begun compiling data of more than 100 heritage trees that it has identified for preservation. All the heritage trees identified are banyan and peepal trees, and are more than 100 years old.”
India history
Devdiscourse: Satyajit Ray’s film manuscripts digitised
Devdiscourse: Satyajit Ray’s film manuscripts digitised. “The National Digital Library of India (NDLI) on Friday launched digitized versions of filmmaker Satyajit Ray’s film manuscripts, IIT-Kharagpur said in a statement. Besides, digitised news reports of Bengali dailies ‘Jugantar’ and ‘Amrita Bazar Patrika’ on freedom struggle and socio-political developments of the pre-Independence era have also been launched, the statement said.”
Hindustan Times: How crowdsourced archives are making Indian history personal and accessible
Hindustan Times: How crowdsourced archives are making Indian history personal and accessible. “Online initiatives such as the Indian Memory Project, The Citizen’s Archive of India (CAI) and 1947 Partition Archives, along with Instagram handles – Brown History and Gulf South Asia, SOAS Postcards – present history in an accessible, unacademic form. They combine an ever-increasing interest in personal stories with modern storytelling techniques to document bygone times.”
New Indian Express: Natural history museum library to go online; rare collections to be digitised
New Indian Express: Natural history museum library to go online; rare collections to be digitised. “The library functions under the Department of Museums and Zoos. It has a collection of about 7,000 books, out of which 500 books fall under the rare collection category. Most of the flora and fauna inside the museum premises have been documented along with lesser-known assets. All the artefacts in the museum including ancient coins and original paintings by Raja Ravi Varma are being photographed to form an online database of the museum’s riches and heritage”
Rediscovering Indian thought: How a scholar built a database of pre-Independence magazines (Scroll)
Scroll: Rediscovering Indian thought: How a scholar built a database of pre-Independence magazines. “The database indexes 315,000 entries from 255 English-language periodicals that were published between 1837 and 1947. It is, and will always be, a free resource. The database would not exist were it not for the immense hard work by a core group of research assistants – Meghna Basu, Christian Fastenrath, and Nidhi Shukla – and the help of hundreds of students and libraries around the world, and more than $350,000 in grants.” I loved this article until I started thinking about all the other endangered archives in the world and how much irreplaceable history may have been sold as waste paper.
New Indian Express: Tamil University to digitize manuscripts with funds from British Library
New Indian Express: Tamil University to digitize manuscripts with funds from British Library. “Rare collections of Tamil manuscripts available in the Tamil University (TU) will now be digitized under the Endangered Archives Programme (EAP) of British Library in London. ‘The British Library has approved 51,040 British Pound Sterling, which is approximately Rs 48 lakhs for the project’, said Vice-Chancellor of TU G Balasubramanian, adding that as a first instalment, the British Library has already released Rs18.50 lakhs.” Rs 48 lakhs is a little less than $68,000 USD.
Hindustan Times: Online exhibition ‘Crafted in India’ to showcase handicraft heritage
Hindustan Times: Online exhibition ‘Crafted in India’ to showcase handicraft heritage. “The exquisite basketry of Angami Nagas from Nagaland, Bell Metal Craft of Payyanur in Kerala, the centuries old ‘Mata Ni Pachedi’ textile art of Gujarat and several other crafts of India are now part of Google Arts and Culture platform.”
