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not available on the web, it is virtually impossible can be taken as Excel spreadsheets. Additionally
for human beings and computer programmes like a sub unit called the Digital Dictionary of South
Google search to mine up the resources. Quality Asia was created understanding the importance
control is also not being consistently applied. of dictionaries for language learning and 58
Pages are missing from many resources and pages dictionaries were collected. One of these worth
with images are sometimes skewed or fractured. mentioning is Odia Bhasa Kosha that is compiled in
The digital library in India while doing digitization collaboration with Srujanika. All these are available
work puts emphasis on the lowest prices by tender at no cost. Historical photos and postcards are also
leading to lack of great attention to the quality and digitized. Postage stamps on postcards give the
quality control on a number of occasions. The other philatelic history and the correspondence in those
issue is absence of open access to cultural resources years gives an understanding of the mind of the
in the programme. Many of the digitized resources people who were engaged in correspondence in
are not visible anywhere other than in the office of those times. These are valuable cultural resources.
the particular agency that has created the digital Two Gujarati women’s journals dating back to
images. Enormous and marvelous work is done the middle of the nineteenth century were also
in preparing digital copies of Persian resources, digitized. Imperial gazetteers and maps were
photography of Raja Lala Dindayal and digitizing digitized as well. The maps show the changing
Odia, Sanskrit, Hindi, Urdu and other manuscripts. pictures of the cities over the years.
However, one has to visit the respective office that
has created them to access the resources. South Asia Open Archive Initiative, a new
programme, was launched in a federated approach
In 1999, an initiative was started by launching to solve some of the problems stated above. So
Digital South Asia Library with a very specific far 23 institutions have gathered together and
purpose to redress the problems of limited access. approximately USD 7.5 lakh have been collected
Currently the digital library receives about three under the programme and additionally, institutions
and half million hits each month. Careful focus was have committed to do digitizing over the course
given to reference resources by creating online of five years. The set priorities for the initiative are:
bibliography. In the beginning of 1999, the initiative first five years to focus on documenting colonial
worked with colleagues from American Institute of documents with special emphasis on official
Indian Studies and private collectors and by now publications; digitizing and making available
about two lakh photographs and images have books selected by scholars to understand regional
been collected and are available online. Statistical cultures; digitizing regional newspapers of 19th
abstracts of British India were created as tables that century (one such digitized newspaper is ‘Swadesh’