David Germano, The Tibetan and Himalayan Digital Library, 2002.

WEB LOCATION: http://iris.lib.virginia.edu/tibet

SYNOPSIS:

David Germano and a team of researchers in Religious Studies at the University of Virginia have created a digital library of Tibetan culture and history. The digital library uses FEDORA ("Flexible Extensible Digital Object Repository Architecture") to build system-wide integration. Germano has also developed a full GIS of Tibet with multimedia documentation of Tibetan places and events, and textual ethno-historical analysis of Tibetan places and events.

EXCERPT:

"The basic model is one of integration and flexibility. Rather than many different web resources using different systems, the digital library integrates all these various resources of different media and different databases into a single integrated architecture. This entails powerful searching facilities across these different resources, standard interfaces, and in general built-in interoperability across resources. This is further reinforced by using standard classification systems across the entire library, as well as the integrated presence of collections, references and tools. In addition, there is maximum flexibility of the data and resources contained by the digital library. Instead of resources being locked into one software system, or one style of presentation, everything--whether a text, a map, image, video, audio recording or database record--sits in the system as an independent, discrete object. These objects then can be used in different ways, as well as combined and detached from each other in accordance with different software functions and needs."