Revealing the Invisible Heritage of Panjab

For the first time ever a searchable collection of millions of rare pages on the
Sikhs and the region of Panjab has been made available. Panjab Digital Library
(PDL) will include texts of manuscripts, books, magazines, newspapers and
photographs and will be available to anyone with Internet access at
www.PanjabDigiLib.org. This launch was made possible in part by The Nanakshahi
Trust and the Sikh Research Institute (SikhRI).

PDL has been in development since 2003, charged with a mission to select,
collect, preserve, digitize and make accessible the accumulated wisdom of
Panjab. Texts were included without distinction as to script, language,
religion, nationality, or other human condition.

"Since long, preservation of heritage, research and education have been a
victim of apathy in Panjab; more so, in the last century. With the launch of the
online digital library, we have tried to fill some of that gap. PDL is a humble
offering to the community what it lost 25 years ago," said Harinder Singh,
co-founder and executive director of SikhRI who also serves on PDL board.
"Scholars will be able to access a wide variety of information concealed in the
manuscripts and other literature of the region with the click of a mouse sitting
in the comfort of their homes. This is essential to the growth of Sikh and
Panjab studies and its meaningful representation in the fast-changing modern
world."

Digitization technology brings with it untold benefits for heritage preservation
and access. Once a document has been properly digitized it becomes immortal and
can remain accessible long after the original has ceased to exist. The option of
digital access further aids in preservation of originals through reduced need
for physical handling. The central digital archive which the PDL has developed
over the last six years allows for wide electronic access to the public and will
help the researcher to search, browse and sift through vast amounts of data in
seconds.

According to Davinder Pal Singh, PDL's co-founder and executive director, "PDL
will break many barriers which currently restrict a conventional library.
Information is decentralized, through its shared storage and access model, thus
enabling utilization of a single resource concurrently by multiple users all
over the world. On a local note, assuming that every household will possibly
have a computer within the next ten years, PDL holds great promises for the
people of Panjab especially."

"To date, PDL has been instrumental in digitally preserving over 2.5 million
folios from 3,400 manuscripts, 2,200 books, 1,990 issues of periodicals, 5,578
issues of newspapers, 3,152 photographs, 248,000 legal documents and some 168
hours of video recordings," commented Gurvinder Singh, PDL's US Coordinator. The
current collection of data amounts to about 15,000 GB of available information.

Among others, major institutional collections digitized to date include SGPC,
DSGMC, Government Museum and Art Gallery Chandigarh, Chief Khalsa Diwan, Panjab
Languages Department, and Kurukshetra University. Critical works of significant
importance from the personal collections of Prof. Pritam Singh, Dr. Man Singh
Nirankari, Dr. Kirpal Singh, Dr. Madanjit Kaur and Prof. Gurtej Singh are also
available at PDL.

"PDL is the only non-profit, non-governmental organization to have initiated a
digitization project for the preservation and upkeep of Panjab archives, and
perhaps the only one in India" said Gurnihal Singh Pirzada Director, PDL's board
member. "PDL has undertaken rigorous research and laid solid ground work in
order to be in the best possible position for this launch. Projects around the
globe were closely studied as models for establishing a successful digitization
project. Internationally recognized benchmarks were referred to and complied
with," he further said.


PDL is an ongoing project in its early stages and the collection will grow
substantially in coming years. New titles are being digitized everyday and the
Web site will be updated with new features and titles on monthly basis. PDL
staff will be adding at least 50,000 pages per week to the Web site's
collection.


Contact Person: Davinder Pal Singh
davinder.singh@... | 98141 13047