In the June 6 Chronicle of Higher Education, Peter Monaghan profiles the open-access Tibetan Buddhist Resource Center and describes the efforts of E. Gene Smith to collect and digitize the texts on which it is based. (Monaghan's article is only available online to CHE subscribers.) All the TBRC texts are now available on disk, with the exception of a few passages on secret rites, omitted at the request of the Tibetan caretakers of the paper originals. The digital texts are slowly moving from disks to the web, where are they are available without charge. Those who want texts not yet online may order them on disk and pay whatever they are moved to pay. Quoting Smith: "There is an uneasiness in the Tibetan tradition about selling books or images. We like to try at least to cover the cost of postage [but do not even require that]. The idea is that we just don't want to be selling back the Tibetan culture to the Tibetans."
Posted by
Peter Suber at 6/06/2003 12:46:00 PM.
The open access movement:
Putting peer-reviewed scientific and scholarly literature
on the internet. Making it available free of charge and
free of most copyright and licensing restrictions.
Removing the barriers to serious research.
