South Asian Studies

"CrossAsia offers access to specialised information from the entire spectrum of humanities and social sciences from and about Asia...Examples include the steadily growing set of licensed full-text databases with nationwide remote access, the CrossAsia Search, which, in addition to its own printed and electronic holdings, provides central access to Asia-related original-language bibliographic records in catalogues of national and international libraries, a full-text search which searches in the data pool of the Integrated Text Repository (ITR) with full-texts extracted from licensed databases, and the CrossAsia Open Access Repository for primary and secondary publications for unrestricted and free-of-charge access to scientific information." Covers all of Asia, with specific filters by region, including South Asian materials.

"The Digital South Asia Library provides digital materials for reference and research on South Asia to scholars, public officials, business leaders, and other users. This program builds upon a two-year pilot project funded by the Association of Research Libraries' Global Resources Program with support from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. Participants in the Digital South Asia Library include leading U.S. universities, the Center for Research Libraries, the South Asia Microform Project, the Committee on South Asian Libraries and Documentation, the Association for Asian Studies, the Library of Congress, the Asia Society, the British Library, the University of Oxford, the University of Cambridge, MOZHI in India, the Sundarayya Vignana Kendram in India, Madan Puraskar Pustakalaya in Nepal, and other institutions in South Asia."

"The Endangered Archives Programme (EAP) facilitates the digitisation of archives around the world that are in danger of destruction, neglect or physical deterioration. Thanks to generous funding from Arcadia, a charitable foundation that works to preserve cultural heritage and promote open access to knowledge, we have provided grants to over 500 projects in over ninety countries worldwide, in more than a hundred languages and scripts. Since 2004, the Programme has helped digitise more than thirteen million images and 35,000 sound tracks. Archive types digitised so far include rare printed sources, manuscripts, visual materials, audio recordings. This continually expanding online collection is available freely through local archival partners, this website and it is discoverable via the British Library catalogue, for research, inspiration and enjoyment."

"The LUMS Digital Archive is a research repository that aims at collecting, cataloging and preserving rare material (books, pamphlets, newspapers and other items) of historical significance and making them available to researchers. In particular, the archive focuses on events, groups, movements and personalities relating to broader historical, political and cultural trends in South Asia, with an emphasis on preserving the accounts of marginalized and subaltern groups."

"Tasveer Ghar is a trans-national virtual 'home' for collecting, digitizing, and documenting various materials produced by South Asia’s exciting popular visual sphere including posters, calendar art, pilgrimage maps and paraphernalia, cinema hoardings, advertisements, and other forms of street and bazaar art. Some of the key fields of exploration within the network are: the social and performative life of mass-produced images; the histories and everyday lives and voices of producers, disseminators and ‘consumers’ of mass-produced images; various techniques of visuality/media of visualisation (for instance, ritual or theatrical per­formance, or political spectacle)."

"The immediate objective of the Afghanistan Digital Library is to retrieve and restore the first sixty years of Afghanistan’s published cultural heritage. The project is collecting, cataloging, digitizing, and making available over the Internet as many Afghan publications from the period 1871–1930 as it is possible to identify and locate. In addition to books, this will eventually include all published serials, documents, pamphlets, and manuals. Phase 1 of the project, undertaken in 2005, has drawn materials from the collections of several private collectors as well as from the holdings of New York University Library and the British Library. Phase 2, undertaken in 2006, has trained a staff at the National Archives in Kabul in conservation and digitization and is engaged in the cataloging and digitization of materials held in various public and private collections inside Afghanistan. In time the project plans to carry the dissemination of Afghan publications through the period between 1931 and 1950. Providing universal availability to this broad historical span of Afghanistan’s published history, and in the process constructing a national bibliography for the country, the Afghanistan Digital Library will reconstruct an essential part of Afghanistan’s cultural heritage."

"The Balochistan Archives is an executive agency of the Government of Balochistan which serves as the main repository for official records and documents of historical significance. The Archives contain evidence of financial and legal commitments, provide information about significant historical events, and help protect the civil and legal property rights of the citizens. In short, archives are the pillars on which the foundation of history stands and, therefore, require preservation and special care. We are the guardians of the most significant national and provincial level documents in Balochistan Province. Currently, we hold more than 30,000 files, printed (5,000 Rare Books) papers, books, and manuscripts pertaining to the colonial and post-independence period in Balochistan."

"The National Archives of India is the custodian of the records of enduring value of the Government of India. Established on 11 March 1891 at Calcutta (Kolkata) as the Imperial Records Department, the National Archives of India is the custodian of the records of enduring value. It is the biggest archival repository in South Asia. It has a vast corpus of records viz., public records, private papers, oriental records, cartographic records and microfilms, which constitute an invaluable source of information for scholars/administrators and other users of archives."

Digital library arm of the National Library and Repository of Sri Lanka. Contains government publications, periodicals, manuscripts, journals, etc.

"The Digital Himalaya Project is digitising archival collections of ethnographic information from the Himalayan region. Five major anthropological collections were selected for digitisation in the first phase of the project to reflect a range of different media and a wide coverage of geographical areas and ethnic populations from across the Himalayas. Alongside these visual and audio collections, we have more recently digitised an extensive set of back issues of Himalayan journals and maps and have created layered GIS maps of Nepal's 75 districts. Our newest collection is collection of bird reports from Nepal."

"The Cambridge South Asian Archive is an unusual collection of materials, covering a period of over 200 years. It includes over 600 written collections, 900 maps, 100,000 photographs, and 80 collections of cinéfilms. Together they paint a rich and unique picture of the Raj and the early decades of post-colonial South Asia. In the main, the collection consists of private papers, photographs and drawings, books, ciné film and tape recordings. Full details of the collection are given in Cambridge South Asian Archive. The films and oral history collections are available online by clicking on the sections below. The photograph collection is in the process of being digitised and will be made available online in stages, as the work progresses. The memoirs listed in the Papers section are retrospectives: since its foundation in 1964 the Centre has encouraged the writing of memoirs by men and women who lived and worked in India. This has been considered to be of particular importance in those cases where original papers have not survived."

"This collection documents the activity of a generation of Sri Lankan radical activists who, in their different ways, attempted to escape the claims of rival ethno-nationalisms and build alternative political and development projects, drawing on Marxism, Christian socialism, and feminism, among other inspirations."

"A collection of 1970s Hindi ephemera, street literature consisting of vrat katha pamphlets, other assorted ritual manuals, svang drama texts, astrological texts, materials on diet and health, Devi mahatmya booklets, and two dozen issues of Vir Gurjar, a little magazine put out by the Akhil Bharatiya Gujar Samaj Sadharan Sabha (All India Society for the Uplift of Gujar Society)."

"The South Asian Ephemera Collection is an openly accessible repository of items that spans a variety of subjects and languages and supports research, teaching, and private study. Newly acquired materials are digitized and added on an ongoing basis."

Collection of around 900 Tamil-language materials, mostly manuscripts. Subject largely revolve around medicine, philosophy, religion, and grammar.

Digital archive run by the Buddhist Digital Resource Center (BDRC), "the leader in the field of digital preservation of Buddhist texts, working with local partners to provide free access for the global community. The Buddhist Digital Resource Center is the largest online archive of Tibetan and Buddhist texts in the world, and provides open access to this incredible body of literature via an online library..." Includes Buddhist Bhutanese and other South Asian collections

Online collection/index of 450+ English-language periodicals from India. Largely focused around 19th and 20th centuries.

"Indian Memory Project is a visual and narrative based online archive that traces the diverse and personal histories of South Asia, via photographs (and sometimes letters) found in private archives. Contextualised with narratives, the photographs are contributed to the archive from all over the world. The micro-stories reveal a macro narrative, and thus a powerful and historical palimpsest of a largely undocumented society and subcontinent. With personal images serving as evidence, each post on the archive reveals valuable historical trajectories about the South Asian regions’s people, visitors, families & ancestors, cultures, lifestyles, traditions, choices, circumstances and thereby consequences. Indian Memory Project is a empathetic and personal memory of the world – a sociological and photographic history, remembered, realised and experienced by its own people."

Open access preservation repository for oral history interviews relating to the 1947 partitioning of India. Includes 11,000+ interviews with supporting videos and photographs.

"The SAOHP represents one of the first attempts in the U.S. to record pan-South Asian immigrant experiences in the Pacific Northwest using the medium of oral history. This initiative not only has the goal of preserving the history of South Asian immigration to the region, but also of making these historical resources/material available to everyone...The SAOHP has been conducted in four phases. Each phase is marked by key historical events that drew South Asians to the United States like the end of World War Two and the partition of India and Pakistan, the opening of U.S. immigration laws in 1965 to people from South Asia, and the growth of key technology industries in the region that attracted South Asian students and workers."

Initiative through the University of Cambridge and Yale to archive and protect oral literature and storytelling traditions from extinction due to globalization and other pressures. Dormant since 2013, but extant collections and archives are still freely accessible and include several sourced from India and other South Asian nations/regions.