Presented by Dr. Anup Kumar Das in the International Conference on the Memory of the World in the Digital Age: Digitization and Preservation, 26-28 September 2012, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada

1. Digitization of Documentary Heritage
Collections in Indic Language
Comparative Study of Five Major Digital Library
Initiatives in India
Dr. Anup Kumar Das
Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU)
New Delhi, India
http://www.anupkumardas.blogspot.in/
Presented in the International Conference on the Memory of the
World in the Digital Age: Digitization and Preservation, 26-28
September 2012, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada

2. Outline
• Introduction
• Indicative Multilingual DL Initiatives in India
• Digital Library of India (DLI) project
• IGNCA maintained Digital Libraries
• National Mission for Manuscripts
• DL Initiatives with Single Indic Language Contents
• Challenges Ahead
• Examining Semantic Web Principles
• Conclusion

3. Introduction
• Article 6 of the UNESCO Universal Declaration on Cultural Diversity
“Towards Access for All to Cultural Diversity”
• Mandates of Networked Knowledge Societies.
• DL as a vehicle for widely disseminating documentary heritages.
• Indian DL initiatives aim at producing a vast amount of Multilingual,
Multicultural digitized contents pertaining to different forms of
recorded human knowledge, ranging from the rare manuscripts to
current literature.

4. Introduction
• Culturally diverse contents in multilingual DLs ensure intercultural
understanding and intercultural dialogues, a building block for
inclusive knowledge societies.
• When establishing digital library with a large collection, collaboration
is inevitable.
• Indian DL initiatives achieved multi-stakeholders’ participation with
increased international, regional, national and local collaborations.
• Providing metadata information in Indic languages is one of the
major challenges in DLs in Indic languages

5. Indicative Multi-/ Bi-lingual DL Initiatives in India
Name of the Initiative Implementing Agency Funding Agency Website
Digital Library of Indian Institute of MCIT and others http://www.new1.dli.ernet.
India (DLI) Science; IIIT ;
Hyderabad; C-DAC http://www.new.dli.ernet.in
;
http://dli.cdacnoida.in
Kalasampada: Digital IGNCA MCIT http://www.ignca.nic.in/dlr
Library Resources for
Indian Cultural
Heritage (DL-RICH)
National Databank on IGNCA MCIT http://ignca.nic.in/ndb_000
Indian Art and
Culture (NDBIAC)
Kritisampada : National Mission for Ministry of Culture http://www.namami.or
National Database of Manuscripts, IGNCA g/pdatabase.aspx
Manuscripts
Panjab Digital Panjab Digital Nanakshahi Trust and http://www.panjabdigi
Library (PDL) Library others lib.org/
Digital Repository of West Bengal Public Directorate of Library http://dspace.wbpubli
WBPLN (DR- Library Network Services, West Bengal bnet.gov.in/dspace/
WBLLN) (WBPLN), CDAC
Kolkata

6. Indicative Multi-/ Bi-lingual DL Initiatives in India
Name of the Implementing Funding Agency Website
Initiative Agency
Open Access to Oriya National Institute of NITR; Srujanika, http://oaob.nitrkl.ac.i
Books – Project Technology, Bhubaneswar; n
OaOb Rourkela Pragati Utkal Sangh R
Archives of Indian V. V. Giri National Ministry of Labour http://www.indialabo
Labour (AIL) Labour Institute & urarchives.org
Association of Indian
Labour Historians
Muktabodha Digital Muktabodha Donations from http://muktalib5.org/
Library Indological Research Individuals & Trusts digital_library.htm
Institute
Traditional Council of Scientific Department of http://www.tkdl.res.i
Knowledge Digital and Industrial Ayurveda, Yoga… n
Library (TKDL) Research (CSIR) (AYUSH)
National Science NISCAIR, India Council of Scientific http://nsdl.niscair.res
Digital Library and Industrial .in
Research (CSIR)
Vigyan Prasar Vigyan Prasar, India Department of http://www.vigyanpr
Digital Library Science and asar.gov.in/digilib/
Technology

7. Digital Library of India
• A partner project of Universal Digital Library (UDL) or Million Books
Project (MBP)
• Initiated in India in 2002 as spin-off of Universal Digital Library
project.
• 355,000+ documents; top six languages are respectively English,
Sanskrit, Hindi, Telugu, Bengali and Urdu covering about 91.3% of
books in major DLI site http://www.new1.dli.ernet.in.
• Becomes a testbed for Indian language technologies, facilitating
development of OCR (optical character recognition), TTS (text-to-
speech) and other related software for Indian language computing.
• Challenge 1: Indic language contents are not OCR-ed.
• Challenge 2: Metadata information not available in Indic languages
for Indic language documents.
• Challenge 3: Document is downloaded page-wise in image, html, txt
formats; but not full whole document downloaded in a single click,
e.g. in PDF file.
• Challenge 4: Broken links and page is not available – signs of aging.

8. Multi-stakeholders’ Participation
o Principal Coordinator (International) – Carnegie
Mellon University
o Principal Coordinator (National) – Indian Institute of
Science (IISc), Bangalore
o Research Coordinator (National) – International
Institute of Information Technology (IIIT), Hyderabad
o Infrastructure Agency – ERNET Society
o Funding Agencies – MCIT, NSF, PSA
o Software and Hardware Solutions – Industrial
Partners
o Operational Agencies
– Regional Mega Scanning Centres (RMSCs)
– Scanning Centres
– Source Libraries

9. Participation in Content Generation
Academic
Institutions
(e.g. Anna
University)
Research
Cultural
Agencies
Institutions (e.g.
(e.g. CDAC-
Salarjung
Noida)
Museum)
Digital Library
of India
Religious Industrial
Institutions Agencies
(e.g. Tirumala (e.g. Thrinaina
Tirupati Informatics
Devasthanam) Government Ltd.)
Agencies
(e.g.
Rashtrapati
Bhavan)

10. Content Generation Process
Coordination

11. IGNCA maintained Digital Libraries
• Partially open access multilingual and multimedia digital
contents
– Kalasampada: Digital Library Resources for Indian
Cultural Heritage (DL-RICH)
– Cultural Heritage Digital Library in Hindi (CHDLH)
– National Databank on Indian Art and Culture
– National Digital Library of Manuscripts
• Supported by DIT, MCIT; Ministry of Culture
– Content Development and IT Localisation Network
(COILNET) Programme
– Technology Development for Indian Languages
(TDIL) Programme
– National Mission for Manuscripts

12. Collaborative Digital Libraries on Indian
Cultural Heritage
Archaeological
Survey of India
Manuscript
National
Libraries
Mission for
(e.g., Allama
Manuscripts
Iqbal Library)
IGNCA’s
Partner
Oriental
Government Institutions
Institutions
Agencies
(e.g. Oriental
(e.g. Asiatic
Research
Society)
Library)
Academic Museums
Institutions (e.g. National
(e.g. Visva- Museum)
Bharati)

13. National Mission for Manuscripts
• February 2003 by Ministry of Tourism and Culture, Government of
India.
• An ambitious five year project with the specific objectives of locating,
documenting, conserving and disseminating the knowledge content of
India's manuscripts.
• Established a network of 47 Manuscript Resource Centres, 32
Manuscript Conservation Centres (MCCs), 32 Manuscript Partner
Centres (MPCs) and more than 200 Manuscript Conservation Partner
Centres (MCPCs) across the country.
• NMM identified 45 collections of Manuscript Treasures of India (MTI).
These are very unique and rare collections of manuscripts.
• 5 MTIs have already inscribed on Memory of the World Register.
• Out of 6 inscriptions from India, 5 inscriptions are from MTIs.
• National Digital Manuscripts Library will provide full-text access to all
MTIs including which are covered in MoWR.
• Kritisampada: The National Database of Manuscripts provides access
to metadata inform of manuscript collections of NMM partners.

15. DL Initiatives with Single Indic Language Contents
Name of Digital Library Organization Focused Whether S/W used
Indic Metadata
Language in Indic
Language
Digital Repository of W.B. West Bengal State Bengali Yes, DSpace
Public Library Network Central Library & Partial*
CDAC Kolkata
Panjab Digital Library Panjab Digital Library; Punjabi No* -
Nanakshahi
Open Access to Oriya Books National Institute of Oriya No* EPrints
– Project OaOb Technology, Rourkela;
Srujanika, BBS
Digital Repository of VPM Vidya Prasarak Marathi Yes, DSpace
Mandal, Thane Partial*
ASI Digital Library Archeological Survey of English and No* -
India; Sanskrit
IGNCA New Delhi
E-Gyankosh Indira Gandhi National English and No* DSpace
Open University, New Hindi
Delhi
* Metadata available mostly in transliterated English

16. Challenges Ahead
• Lack of national practice for establishing principles of
interoperability, cross-search, metadata harvesting, etc.
• Enabling harvesting of metadata from South Asian digital
libraries
– Protocol for Metadata Harvesting (OAI-PMH) can be adopted
– Other similar harvesting method can be applied
• Standardization of transliterated metadata or metadata
with diacritical mark
• South Asian documentary heritage collections available
worldwide – stock taking
• Innovation in DL development is needed to integrate
features of interactive Web 2.0 (such as user interaction
and content sharing), Multimedia, and M-Science
(accessibility using mobile devices).

17. Examining Semantic Web Principles
• Indic language metadata – providing metadata in all
major Indian languages for a full-text document
• Whether ontology-based structure is followed (RT, BT,
NT…)
– Standard vocabulary/ structured subject headings/
subject thesaurus vs. user-generated keywords
• Whether permanent link is available for a document or a
dynamic link is generated
– Rate of link failure or dead links (links to full-text
contents, images, etc.)
• Whether contents can be accessed using handheld
devices
• Whether text-to-speech (TTS) can be applied

18. Conclusion
• Helped in bridging digital divide in the country by making
Indian language documents freely available to the
masses.
• Helped in pushing content localization efforts.
• ‘Lean backward’ to digitize important documentary
heritage collections.
• “Lean forward” to include born digital contents in
multilingual OA repositories.
• National DLs to include rare and out-of-print books and
manuscripts in all Indian languages.
• Metadata harvesters for these DLs.

19. Acknowledgement
• UNESCO, UBC and JNU for travel and technical support
thanK You
anY Question?
http://www.anupkumardas.blogspot.in/