The Tibetan and Himalayan Library (THL), formerly the Tibetan and Himalayan Digital Library (THDL), is a multimedia guide and

digital library A digital library, also called an online library, an internet library, a digital repository, or a digital collection is an online database of digital objects that can include text, still images, audio, video, digital documents, or other digital me ...

hosted by the

University of Virginia The University of Virginia (UVA) is a Public university#United States, public research university in Charlottesville, Virginia. Founded in 1819 by Thomas Jefferson, the university is ranked among the top academic institutions in the United S ...

focused on the languages, history and geography of

Tibet Tibet (; ''Böd''; ) is a region in East Asia, covering much of the Tibetan Plateau and spanning about . It is the traditional homeland of the Tibetan people. Also resident on the plateau are some other ethnic groups such as Monpa people, ...

and the

Himalayas The Himalayas, or Himalaya (; ; ), is a mountain range in Asia, separating the plains of the Indian subcontinent from the Tibetan Plateau. The range has some of the planet's highest peaks, including the very highest, Mount Everest. Over 100 ...

. The THL has also designed a scholarly transcription for

Standard Tibetan Lhasa Tibetan (), or Standard Tibetan, is the Tibetan dialect spoken by educated people of Lhasa, the capital of the Tibetan Autonomous Region of China. It is an official language of the Tibet Autonomous Region. In the traditional "three-branch ...

known as the

THL Simplified Phonetic Transcription The THL Simplified Phonetic Transcription of Standard Tibetan (or ''THL Phonetic Transcription'' for short) is a system for the phonetic rendering of the Tibetan language. It was created by David Germano and Nicolas Tournadre and was published on ...

Overview

THDL was established in 2000 in association with the

Library and the

Institute for Advanced Technology in the Humanities The Institute for Advanced Technology in the Humanities (IATH) is a research unit of the University of Virginia, USA. Its goal is to explore and develop information technology as a tool for scholarly humanities research. To that end, IATH provide ...

, using the innovative

Fedora Commons Fedora (or Flexible Extensible Digital Object Repository Architecture) is a digital asset management (DAM) content repository architecture upon which institutional repositories, digital archives, and digital library systems might be built. Fedor ...

(Flexible Extensible Digital Object Repository Architecture) system. Content includes publications, research resources, language learning materials, and a gazetteer. THDL provides "an integrated environment for the digital publication of many diverse academic projects connected with Tibet and the Himalayan region". The structure of THDL consists of five overarching domains: Collections, Reference, Community, Tools, and Education. Content of THDL is in English,

Tibetan Tibetan may mean: * of, from, or related to Tibet * Tibetan people, an ethnic group * Tibetan language: ** Classical Tibetan, the classical language used also as a contemporary written standard ** Standard Tibetan, the most widely used spoken dial ...

, Nepali,

Dzongkha Dzongkha (; ) is a Sino-Tibetan language that is the official and national language of Bhutan. It is written using the Tibetan script. The word means "the language of the fortress", from ' "fortress" and ' "language". , Dzongkha had 171,080 n ...

and Chinese languages. Most content in the digital library is published under the THDL Public License For Digital Texts. The project is run by an international team of scholars from universities and private organizations around the world. THDL hosts the

Journal of the International Association of Tibetan Studies The ''Journal of the International Association of Tibetan Studies'' (''JIATS'') is a freely available online, peer-reviewed English language academic journal focusing on Tibetan studies. ''JIATS'' is an official publication of the Internationa ...

(

JIATS The ''Journal of the International Association of Tibetan Studies'' (''JIATS'') is a freely available online, peer-reviewed English language academic journal focusing on Tibetology, Tibetan studies. ''JIATS'' is an official publication of the In ...

), a freely available online,

peer-reviewed Peer review is the evaluation of work by one or more people with similar competencies as the producers of the work (peers). It functions as a form of self-regulation by qualified members of a profession within the relevant field. Peer review ...

English language English is a West Germanic language of the Indo-European language family, with its earliest forms spoken by the inhabitants of early medieval England. It is named after the Angles, one of the ancient Germanic peoples that migrated to the is ...

academic journal An academic journal or scholarly journal is a periodical publication in which scholarship relating to a particular academic discipline is published. Academic journals serve as permanent and transparent forums for the presentation, scrutiny, and d ...

focusing on Tibetan studies.

Tibetan Machine Uni

Tibetan Machine Uni is an open source

OpenType OpenType is a format for scalable computer fonts. It was built on its predecessor TrueType, retaining TrueType's basic structure and adding many intricate data structures for prescribing typographic behavior. OpenType is a registered trademark o ...

font for the

Tibetan script The Tibetan script is a segmental writing system (''abugida'') of Brahmic scripts, Indic origin used to write certain Tibetic languages, including Lhasa Tibetan, Tibetan, Dzongkha, Sikkimese language, Sikkimese, Ladakhi language, Ladakhi, Jire ...

based on a design by Tony Duff which was updated and adapted for rendering

Unicode Unicode, formally The Unicode Standard,The formal version reference is is an information technology Technical standard, standard for the consistent character encoding, encoding, representation, and handling of Character (computing), text expre ...

Tibetan text by the Tibetan and Himalayan Library project at the University of Virginia and released under the

GNU General Public License The GNU General Public License (GNU GPL or simply GPL) is a series of widely used free software licenses that guarantee end users the Four Freedoms (Free software), four freedoms to run, study, share, and modify the software. The license was th ...

. The font supports a particularly extensive set of conjunct ligatures for Tibetan.

References

Sources

Review of the Tibetan and Himalayan Library
at World History Sources
The Tibetan and Himalayan Digital Library: A New Model for the Nexus of Knowledge and Community for Academic Study of Other CulturesTHDL Project Overview
D-Lib Magazine,Volume 8, Number 5, May 2002

External links

Tibetan & Himalayan Library

Old Tibetan & Himalayan Digital Library site

The Journal of the International Association of Tibetan Studies (JIATS)
Geographic region-oriented digital libraries University of Virginia Himalayan culture Himalayan studies Tibetan culture 2000 establishments in Virginia American digital libraries {{asia-studies-stub