http://dsal.uchicago.edu/
Center for Research Libraries
6050 South Kenwood Ave.
Chicago, IL 60637
Phone: (773) 955-4545
Principal Investigator
Bernard F. Reilly
reilly@crl.edu
Project Co-Director
James H. Nye
jnye@midway.uchicago.edu
Project Co-Director
James T. Simon
simon@crl.edu
Project Manager
Gerald Hall
hall@crl.edu
Dollar Allocation Year 1: $197,000
Project Overview:
The Center for Research Libraries will undertake a four- year collaborative project to expand access to vital resources on South Asia. The project will improve the existing information infrastructure and provide expeditious delivery of research materials from the South Asian subcontinent and England to scholars, public officials, business leaders and other citizens. The project encompasses all seven authorized activities enumerated in the statute authorizing the Technological Innovation and Cooperation for Foreign Information Access (TICFIA) program.
Project Design and Activities
The TICFIA South Asia project will develop and bring together complex digital objects in a variety of formats and from several sources around the world. Four major products will be created and made accessible during the four years of funding:
a) Expanded access to information on South Asian publications through the preparation and addition of 120,000 new bibliographic and authority records for the South Asia Union Catalogue (SAUC). SAUC is a cap-stone program gathering historical and current bibliographic records to create a definitive statement on publishing in the South Asian subcontinent from 1556 through the present. TICFIA South Asia will focus on western and north central regions of the subcontinent.
b) Digital audio files of sound recordings from the Linguistic Survey of India, delivered via the Internet. The British Library's collection of 242 gramophone discs recorded during the period from 1913 until 1929 form a largely unknown but invaluable facet of the Linguistic Survey, a monumental nineteen-volume publication describing every known language and dialect of the South Asian subcontinent.
c) Preservation and access for highly select periodicals published in South Asia. TICFIA South Asia will preserve on microfilm and provide extensive journal indexing for up to 250 periodical titles, selected by a panel of South Asian specialists. The project is targeting the creation of up to 12,000 index, which will be made freely available online.
d) Development of electronic article delivery from the South Asian subcontinent to researchers in the U.S. To be implemented in stages over the four year funding period, partners in South Asia will provide electronic delivery of articles on demand from TICFIA South Asia increasing numbers of resources not available in U.S. institutions. The project will assist in the development of a sustainable model for intercontinental delivery as well as intraregional cooperation.
Project Significance and Impact
This project addresses significant needs described by national foundations and associations as well as those recommended by eminent scholars and librarians in the U.S. and South Asia. The project activities respond directly to priorities outlined by the Center for South Asia Libraries (CSAL), an American overseas research center designed to facilitate scholarly research and teaching on South Asia in all academic disciplines through improved preservation of and access to South Asian intellectual and artistic heritage. The project outcomes will provide a wide variety of users with unprecedented access to metadata and content relating to South Asia. Scholars in virtually all disciplines of the social sciences and humanities will be able to consult the project's Web site for an array of documents, digital audio, and bibliographic data supporting their research and teaching. In addition, this project will meet the need for resources for instruction in the less commonly taught languages of South Asia that both scholars and public officials have cited as a particular need.
Personnel, Resources, Management, and Evaluation
The extensive experience of the Center and the University of Chicago in implementing global projects will be leveraged by the project, which will also benefit from close relationships established with collaborating institutions in South Asia and Europe, including the British Library, the Roja Muthiah Research Library, the Centre for Studies in Social Sciences, Calcutta, the American Institute of Indian Studies, and the American Institute of Pakistan Studies, among others. The project will continue to draw upon the technical expertise of the Project for American and French Research on the Treasury of the French Language (ARTFL) at the University of Chicago and the University of Chicago Library that has helped to make the Digital South Asia Library a prominent source of South Asian information on the Internet.