Panjab Digital Library

Reported by : Humanist Discussion Group, Vol. 23, No. 241. Centre for Computing in the Humanities, King's College London

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.