The site was down. That's how Chris Tomlinson first became connected with Gene Smith and the Tibetan Buddhist Resource Center in 2000. She would spend the next two decades as a key technologist for BDRC, helping share the Dharma globally and transforming the way people access Buddhist literature.

Our new website includes improvements to both the user interface and the architecture of the data. In this post we will introduce one of the changes to our data architecture and how this change will affect your searches.

For many, translations of Buddhist texts are their first or main way of studying the Dharma. Translators rely on BDRC, and many readers of Buddhist texts rely on translators.

Long-time friends of BDRC will know of Peter Gruber: founder of the Gruber Foundation Science Prizes, friend of Gene Smith, and a major benefactor of Buddhism in America who played an important role in bringing Buddhist teachings to the West.

While we have partnerships around the world, today we want to highlight and celebrate our partnerships with major institutions in India, which is in many ways the birthplace of TBRC/BDRC. Recently we have released online hundreds of volumes of significant works provided to BDRC by our long-time partners.

Search is how most of our users interact with our library and database. As fast and intuitive as the search on BUDA is, we continue to refine and improve it in order to offer our users the most seamless search experience.  So we are happy to share the news that BUDA's search has been updated with three useful new features, developed based on feedback from our users.

A major update to BDRC's search engine was released in 2014 and today we are releasing a second major improvement to the search engine.

BDRC's Executive Director Dr. Jann Ronis and technical lead Élie Roux present an online demo of our new website and library platform, the Buddhist Digital Archives (BUDA), providing tips and tricks for the new user. 

Even as BDRC builds on Gene's legacy and expands its holdings from Tibetan into Sanskrit, Nepalese, Chinese, Khmer, Pali and Burmese, the heart of our ever-expanding library remains our Tibetan texts.

Tibetan texts can be tricky to work with. Publication information is often missing or unstandardized, with some works lacking titles entirely while others have author information buried in the colophon. That's why BDRC has expert librarians with the specialized knowledge needed to catalog these challenging works.

With generous support from Khyentse Foundation, the Buddhist Digital Resource Center invites applications for a fellowship in Southeast Asian manuscripts, to begin 1 January 2021.

With libraries and archives closed around the world, the value of BDRC's online platform has gained new significance as the most comprehensive collection of Buddhist writings in classical Asian languages.

Today we're featuring new acquisitions of texts from the Kagyu School of Tibetan Buddhism. BDRC founder Gene Smith championed Kagyu literary heritage and had fruitful relations with many Kagyu lamas.

BDRC has an excellent collection of Nyingma texts as a result of its close connections with Nyingma lamas. For decades, BDRC's founder, Gene Smith, was both a student and friend of H.H. Dilgo Khyentse (1910-1991), who was the head of the Nyingma School of Tibetan Buddhism from 1987-1991.

With support from the BDRC community and our generous funding partners, BDRC has been expanding its collection of Tibetan texts through new digitization efforts in Tibet and Mongolia, as well as through our long-term operations in India

Join the BDRC team and help us preserve and share Buddhist literary heritage!

We're seeking three technology and design experts—a UI developer, a UX expert, and a graphic designer—to help us finish our next-generation archival platform, the Buddhist Universal Digital Archive (BUDA).

The Buddhist Digital Resource Center's Board of Directors has selected Jann Ronis to lead BDRC as its new Executive Director.

With support from Khyentse Foundation, the Asian Classics Input Project and the Buddhist Digital Resource Center have partnered to digitize, catalog, and make accessible all Tibetan manuscripts and xylographs held at the National Library of Mongolia in Ulaanbaatar.

BDRC collaborates with many partners in Asia who are right at the source of important collections of Buddhist literature. With support from our local partners and generous sponsors, BDRC is able to digitize those collections and make them freely available in our online archive.

BDRC, with the generous support of the Khyentse Foundation, has been working with the Fragile Palm Leaves Foundation since 2016 to preserve their massive collection of palm leaf Buddhist manuscripts.

Your generosity during BDRC's end-of-year appeal raised well over $15,000 to help support the ongoing development of our new online education platform—which has just launched its first courses! Thank you for helping make this possible!

BDRC has been diligently seeking new collections of important Buddhist texts for preservation and archiving. The results of this work are coming to fruition as BDRC launches a new digitization initiative: the Nepalese Buddhist Sanskrit Manuscript Scanning Initiative.

After 17 years at the Buddhist Digital Resource Center, BDRC's Executive Director Jeff Wallman is stepping down. It is our priority to find the best individual to lead BDRC and the qualities and qualifications we seek in our next Executive Director are described in the announcement below.

BDRC has recently opened a new office in Munich, Germany, which will serve as the central hub for all of BDRC's European activities and operations.

The Fragile Palm Leaves collection includes over one hundred Kammavācā manuscripts, dating from the later 18th century through the early 20th century.

It may be a new year but it's not too late to reflect on what happened in 2017. The last 12 months was a busy time for BDRC, and we reached a number of significant milestones.

BDRC was visited by Khenpo Sodargye, one of the most eminent contemporary Buddhist teachers.

In collaboration with Buddhist Research and Resources Center of Zhejiang University, BDRC is thrilled to announce two significant product offerings: the launch of BDRC's online library for users in China and the release of its free mobile app, "BDRC Lib."

BDRC is pleased to announce the Fragile Palm Leaves Digitization Project. This vital project is made possible by the gracious funding support of the Khyentse Foundation.

We are pleased to announce the addition of two new members to BDRC's Board of Directors: James Robson, of Harvard University, and D. Christian Lammerts, of Rutgers University. The knowledge and expertise of these two new members will vitally benefit BDRC as we develop our programs in East Asia and Southeast Asia.

We are pleased to announce the expansion of our institutional mission to include the preservation of texts in languages beyond Tibetan, including Sanskrit, Pali and Chinese.

We were honored and pleased to host Venerable Khenchen Konchog Gyaltsen Rinpoche at TBRC this week.

David Weinberger's talk, "The Future of Digital Libraries," surrounded importance of digital libraries as spaces in which the identities and values of communities can be expressed through data.

Khenpo Karma Jamyang Gyaltsen visited TBRC on Friday afternoon, touring the TBRC office and joining us for lunch. Khenpo la took time to visit TBRC before giving a talk at Harvard University later in the afternoon; it was an honor for us to host him.

We are thrilled to announce that TBRC Board President Leonard W.J. van der Kuijp has been awarded a 2016 Guggenheim Fellowship for his outstanding scholarship and contributions to the field of Religious studies.

During his time in the United States, Kyabgön Phakchok Rinpoche visited TBRC, touring our Cambridge office and discussing TBRC's work and mission with staff amongst the manuscripts in our library.

Please join us in our end-of-year push to raise $18,651 for a much-needed scanning equipment for our Cambridge office and our fieldwork in India!

Using scans from the TBRC archive, a new project in Chengdu, China, the Ragya Grant Kanjur Republication Initiative (RGKRI), is printing 1,000 copies of the Ragya Kanjur and distributing them to monasteries across Tibetan cultural areas of China.

Beloved Buddhist monk, scientist, photographer, author, and humanitarian Matthieu Ricard made time on Friday to visit the TBRC office, sharing stories, memories, and tea with TBRC staff.

Her Eminence Mindrolling Jetsün Khandro Rinpoche visited TBRC last week, touring the Cambridge office and discussing TBRC's work with staff and TBRC Executive Director Jeff Wallman.

We are pleased to announce the arrival of the TBRC exhibition space on the Google Cultural Institute (GCI) platform, online and via mobile device. The TBRC partnership with GCI will allow people worldwide to intimately explore and interact with high-resolution images from select manuscripts in our digital archive.

In collaboration with monks from Ragya Monastery in eastern Tibet, TBRC has digitally preserved an extremely rare woodblock printing of the Tibetan Buddhist canon: the Ragya Kangyur.

On Thursday, March 26 2015, the Tibetan Buddhist Resource Center had the great honor of hosting His Holiness Gyalwang Karmapa in our office for lunch.

With the gracious support of The Library of Congress Asian Division Tibetan Collection in Washington D.C., and in cooperation with the University of Virginia (UVA), TBRC is making available for download a digital version of the Tibetan Kangyur from the Rockhill collection at the Library of Congress.

Our new campaign, Unlock the Backlog, gives friends of TBRC the opportunity to discover unseen texts, wear wisdom in the form of a beautiful treasure pendant, and donate directly to support the dissemination of little-seen manuscripts.

A delegation of researchers from SOAS, University of London, visited TBRC for two weeks this autumn to learn about the inner-workings of the TBRC's data management, search mechanism, and the new eText collection.

After working with Gene for many years, and since his death, continuing his vision, I am amazed at where are today.

Last week, the Wikipedia fundraising campaign inspired us to copy their year-end effort. And why not? TBRC has millions of pages of Tibetan texts that are readily available to individuals – TBRC is a huge public resource of Tibetan texts .

An article about Gene Smith's life story was published in a prestigious Chinese Magazine called "Xin Zhi" in November 2014.

Negation and Verb Stems Classification
With Dr. Nathan Hill, University of London, School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS)

It is with great sadness I announce that our beloved friend Peter Gruber (1929-2014) passed away on Saturday October 18, 2014. Peter passed away peacefully at his home with his beloved wife Patricia by his side.

Lama Migmar Tseten has kindly offered to share his personal recollections of Dezhung Rinpoche and Gene Smith. This is a unique opportunity to hear, in an informal setting, about two extraordinary people who established the vision that is TBRC.

Leveraging Computerized Tools for Navigating an Uncharted Tibetan Buddhist Philosophical Corpus
Demo and discussion with Dorji Wangchuk & Orna Almogi

The following are entry points into the Tibetan eText Repository.
Browse eTexts /
Global Search eTexts /
Advanced Search eTexts /
Intra-Work search

Work that led up to the recent release of the Lineage records in the TBRC Library goes back ten years. This project to record Lineages from Tibetan gsan yig literature started with work that was done by Ralf and Jowita Kramer within a project originally devised by Jan-Ulrich Sobisch.

As part of our ongoing work in the Research Department, we are building a database of Lineage records in the TBRC Library.

We are systematically researching and tracking tulku lines (skye brgyud) to build successive multi-generational networks of incarnation relations amongst Person records in the TBRC Library.

I am over thrilled to announce a historic partnership between Tibetan Buddhist Resource Center and Harvard University. The Harvard Library and Harvard Digital Repository Services will support the long-term preservation of our entire digital collection. Please see the article in Harvard Magazine.

TBRC has just released on its online library, enhancements for Tibetan language searching.

We are pleased to announce the first in a series of phonetic name imports into the TBRC Library. This first import is of over 1700 new phonetic Tulku Titles, corresponding to Person records.

Though the oral precepts of the Nyingma were introduced from the time of the imperial period, it was not until Minling Terchen Rigzin Gyurme Dorje (1646-1714) and his younger brother Minling Lochen Dharmashri (1654-1718) wrote a series of commentaries on these teachings that the kama (bka' ma) or collection of oral transmissions were created.

We're happy to share this interview by Marco Werman, host of PRI's The World.
Here, he talks with New York Times reporter Andrew Jacobs about TBRC's founder Gene Smith.

If you are a major donor seeking to understand the incredibly rich opportunities that we have and the extraordinary impact potential of our organization – please read and reflect upon this quote of Jeff Wallman, TBRC's Executive Director, to the magazine "Buddhadharma: The Practitioners Quarterly" about the bright outlook of TBRC's future on Harvard Square in Cambridge.

We are thrilled to post this article about TBRC and Tibetan text-preservation in China, which ran in the New York Times on February 15, 2014.

A terrific conversation covering all things TBRC – from great insights about Gene Smith, to how the TBRC Library is essential today.