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The BDRC archive has doubled the number of contemporary women writers and figures represented; an important step towards equality and full representation of Tibetan women in the global knowledge commons.

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BDRC is pleased to announce three valuable additions to the archive which will be of enormous interest to students of Tibetan and Buddhist Studies. These have been generously provided by Jonathan Silk, Professor of Buddhist Studies at Leiden University, with an introduction to each.

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Tibetan AI pioneer, Geshe Lobsang Monlam, founder and CEO of the Monlam Tibetan IT Research Center visited the BDRC office on January 17, 2023. Geshe Monlam's mission to revolutionize Tibetan language technology in order to break down barriers and share Buddhist knowledge resonates with many areas of BDRC's work.

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BDRC recently published online the Matho Fragments, an extremely rare collection of ancient manuscripts—these are in fact the oldest manuscripts ever discovered in Ladakh. The Matho fragments were interred in a stupa dating from the 12th century.

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In addition to the skillful means of writing and translating, Tulku Thondup Rinpoche also sustained the scriptural Dharma in these dark times through his long term support for BDRC. Rinpoche was a founding board member–he joined in 1999 at the inception of the organization–and helped guide the organization as a director for nearly 20 years.

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We honor our founder Gene Smith and we strive to uphold his vision. The Buddhist Digital Resource Center preserves Buddhist literature for the world.

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The Buddhist Digital Resource Center is delighted to present our newly released BDRC Mobile App. The app allows users to view and search the entire BDRC library on their mobile phone, giving you access to 28 million pages of Buddhist literature via the slim iPhone or Android in your hands. The Newly Released App is available from both the Apple Store and Google Play.

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The Aming Tu Prize recognizes our archival platform, the Buddhist Digital Archives (BUDA), for both its practical benefits to researchers and its technological breakthroughs.

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One of the most interesting genres of Tibetan Buddhist literature is the lamyig text, the travel guide, or more appropriately the pilgrimage guide (a subset of lamyig, called the neyig). These travel and pilgrimage guides are not only the most accessible and useful of texts to a wide variety of readers, but they contain history, geography, biography, philosophy, religion, art and anthropology, and more.

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Much like Gene Smith, Jann preferred to work on the ground, preserving the texts and making direct contributions to the field of Buddhism that will be felt for generations.

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We are happy to announce the creation of an exciting new tool to crop and process manuscript images using AI, which up until now has been a laborious and manual process. Called the Segment and Crop Anything Model (SCAM), we have made the tool freely available to the public.

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Given a large collection of 1.4 million scanned images of 5,000 text volumes and a catalog of 84,000 text titles, how can AI help us map the titles to their corresponding images? This article is an account of a successful project that used AI with humans in the loop to map these titles to their corresponding images by detecting library stamps on scanned images. We lay out our methodology and the various technical and non-technical challenges that arose in the process.

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Through a recent interview with Geshe Monlam, of the amazing Grand Monlam Tibetan Dictionary, we learned that the man behind this terrific work is a modern day Renaissance man. Read on.

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Our Executive Director Dr. Jann Ronis gave a book talk at the U.S. Library of Congress on Friday, March 31st. Dr. Ronis presented the Gene Smith photography book "Digital Dharma: Recovering Wisdom," and spoke about Gene Smith and his organization's Buddhist digital preservation as well as innovations and technologies for Buddhist digital humanities for the future.

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The greatest Tibetan dictionary, the Monlam Grand Tibetan Dictionary, is now available on BUDA where it can be used to look up the meaning of every word in our vast e-text archive.

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We are delighted to announce that BDRC Senior Librarian Kelsang Lhamo has published "The White Lotus Biography of Jamyang Gene Smith," her long-awaited Tibetan language biography of our founder Gene Smith.

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Dafna Yachin is the indomitable director of Digital Dharma, the documentary, and now co-author of Digital Dharma: Recovering Wisdom, the companion photo book. Her deep friendship with our founder Gene Smith (1936-2010), who became her mentor, is what drove the first project.

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སྤྱིར་བོད་ཀྱི་ས་མིང་ལ་རིགས་མང་ཞིང་རྒྱ་ཆེ་ལ་ཞིབ་འཇུག་བྱེད་པར་ཡང་མ་མཐར་ས་ཁམས་རིག་པ་དང་། ལོ་རྒྱུས་རིག་པ། སྐད་བརྡ་རིག་པ་སོགས་ཆེད་ལས་སྣ་ཚོགས་ཀྱི་རྣམ་བཤད་བྱེད་ཕྱོགས་ཕུན་སུམ་ཚོགས་པ་ཞིག་ཡོད་པ་གོར་མ་ཆགས་མོད།

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On Tuesday, Jan 17th, BDRC launched a public event series with a book talk by Charles Manson about Buddhist master Karma Pakshi, advisor to the Mongol Khans and the founder of the Karmapa lineage.

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The Dakinis' Great Dharma Treasury, or མཁའ་འགྲོའི་ཆོས་མཛོད་ཆེན་མོ། as this small library of 53 volumes of texts by and about Tibetan women is known, showcases the overlooked brilliance of Buddhist female masters from Tibet through the centuries.

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On Tuesday, November 1, friends and supporters of the Buddhist Digital Resource Center gathered together in New York City to celebrate the publication of a beautiful photography book, on Gene Smith, called Digital Dharma: Recovering Wisdom.

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This rare manuscript copy of Bod Khepa's Collected Works showcases the kind of work that BDRC does, seeking and making available these rare collections from masters whose works would be lost or inaccessible otherwise.

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The Buddhist Digital Resource Center is at the 16th Seminar of the International Association for Tibetan Studies—the IATS conference currently underway at Charles University in Prague in the Czech Republic! The majority of the text-based papers presented at the conference were enabled by BDRC's archive.

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Mingyur Rinpoche spent two hours with BDRC staff, board members and friends discussing BDRC's essential work and the importance of textual preservation for the living Buddhist lineages.

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We made a major new addition to BDRC's geo-data for Buddhist sites in the Inner Asian world, thanks to generous data sharing by the "Documentation of Mongolian Monasteries" project and Dr. Isabelle Charleux. Over time these new sites will become even more dynamic as we begin to link them with texts written or printed at these sites.

Түдэв гүний хүрээ / Tudev gunii khuree

At the Library of Congress, she gave life to the Tibetan Collection, shaping and defining it into one of the most valuable collections at the Library. Because of her, what began as unidentified texts collecting dust deep in storage is now a treasure that draws researchers from all over the world.

Susan Meinheit in Lhasa.

Dr. Petra Kieffer-Pülz is a scholar of Pali literature who has been studying a monastic boundary dispute in Sri Lanka for the past five years. Texts made available by BUDA allowed Dr. Kieffer-Pülz to study previously unsurfaced material that shed new light on this dispute.

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BDRC is proud to announce a new collaboration on a scholarly project: The Authors and Translators Identification Initiative. The goal of ATII is the creation of an open source collaborative database of authors, translators and other figures involved in the creation of Indic Buddhist texts and Buddhist canons – including particularly the Tibetan and Chinese ones.

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On February 1, 2022, our old library website at tbrc.org will go offline and our new library website at the Buddhist Digital Archives will become the sole gateway into our extensive digital archive. BUDA, the result of years of effort and innovation, unifies the diverse array of Buddhist texts in our library on a single platform.

BUDA, BDRC's new website

The Buddhist Digital Resource Center was recently honored, on November 30, with a personal visit from His Holiness the 42nd Sakya Trizin, Ratna Vajra Rinpoche, the head of the Sakya tradition of Tibetan Buddhism. Our Executive Director Jann Ronis and our expert librarians gave Sakya...

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Our library platform, the Buddhist Digital Archives, is a vast ocean of Dharma texts. Please enjoy browsing a selection of our collections on BUDA. These collections are groups of texts that are part of the same preservation project, the same library, or come from a single BDRC institutional partner.

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BDRC is pleased to announce that we have successfully added Tibetan Collation Rules to the CLDR. This step will bring Tibetan closer to being fully supported on websites and smartphones, and will improve the digital experience of Tibetans worldwide.

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One of our priorities in developing BUDA was to create a great reading room experience for our users, many of whom are practitioners, researchers, and translators who spend a great deal of time poring over these Buddhist materials.

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As part of the University of Vienna-Tibetan Manuscripts Project and the Resources for Kanjur and Tanjur Studies project, Helmut Tauscher, Bruno Lainé and Markus Viehbeck have documented, and made accessible, valuable manuscripts from the western and southern Himalayas, including rare editions of the Kangyur and Tengyur.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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The Dao of Peter

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.

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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.

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Search Me!

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.

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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.

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BUDA Demo Now Online

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. 

BUDA: Buddhist Digital Archives

For close to 25 years now, a leading resource in Tibetan Studies has been Dan Martin's Tibetan Histories: A Bibliography of Tibetan-Language Historical Works, Serindia Publications (London 1997). BDRC is proud to be able to now make this resource available for download.

Tibetan Histories by Dan Martin

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.

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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.

Visit from Thupten Jinpa at BDRC headquarters.

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.

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Treasures from Cambodia

The monastic library of Vatt Phum Thmei in Cambodia holds a remarkable collection of Buddhist texts. Digitized by BDRC, the roughly 2,500 bundles of palm-leaf manuscripts are a treasure trove of thousands of years of Cambodian cultural knowledge.

A zoomed in look at the "Code of Old Sayings"

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.

manuscript of the Mañjuśrīnāmasaṃgīti digitized in Kathmandu under the auspices of the Endangered Archives Programme at the British Library

Following Gene's founding vision, BDRC doesn't solely focus on the preservation of strictly religious texts, but rather seeks out texts that reflect the full richness of Buddhist culture— including, for example, Medical and Astrological works in the Tibetan language.

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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.

Some of Gene's personal notebooks about Kagyu history and literature

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.

Gene Smith with Dilgo Khyentse and others

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

BDRC's founder, E. Gene Smith, at Menri Monastery

We're Hiring!

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).

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

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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's Head Librarian, Karma Gongde, reviewing texts at the National Library of Mongolia

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.

From left to right: Rashmi Shakya, Nabin Bajracharya (Scanning Technician), Milan Shakya (NIBS Managing Director), Travis DeTour, Miroj Shakya (Director of NIBS), Tejendra Shakya

BDRC In Thailand

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.

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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!

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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.

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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.

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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.

Budhist Digital Resource Center Opens Office in Europe

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

Folios from a Kammavācā manuscript

2017: Year in Review

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.

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

Khenpo Sodargye with BDRC staff

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."

The app's interface

Buddhist Digital Resource Center (BDRC) is pleased to announce the development of the Sanskrit and Chinese Buddhist Library Network.

Sanskrit and Chinese Buddhist Library

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.

Fragile Palm Leaves Digitization Project

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.

James Robson (left) and D. Christian Lammerts (right)

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.

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

Venerable Khenchen Konchog Gyaltsen Rinpoche with TBRC staff

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.

David Weinberger

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.

Khenpo Karma Jamyang Gyaltsen

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.

TBRC Board President Leonard W.J. van der Kuijp

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.

Kyabgön Phakchok Rinpoche with TBRC staff and Lama Willa Miller

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!

The TBRC Cambridge office scanner

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.

Ragya Kanjur Archival Scan

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.

Matthieu Ricard and a handful of 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.

H.H. Khandro Rinpoche and Executive Director Jeff Wallman at TBRC

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.

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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.

Ragya Monastery text

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.

His Holiness the Karmapa blessing the TBRC office

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.

Pages from the Degge Kangyur

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 discovery from the pages of The History of the 84 Mahasiddhas.

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.

Launching Collaboration with SOAS

Gene's Vision for TBRC

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

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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 .

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

Gene-Smith

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

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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.

Peter Gruber

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.

Dezhung Rinpoche

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

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

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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.

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

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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.

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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.

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

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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.

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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.

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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.

TBRC on Public Radio International

The impact of donations

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.

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TBRC in the NY Times!

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.

TBRC in the NY Times!

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

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  • All
  • BUDA
  • Highlights from the archive

Featuring Women Writers in the BDRC Archive

The BDRC archive has doubled the number of contemporary women writers and figures represented; an important step towards equality and full representation of Tibetan women in the global knowledge commons.

New Insights from the World of 19th and Early 20th Century Buddhist Studies

BDRC is pleased to announce three valuable additions to the archive which will be of enormous interest to students of Tibetan and Buddhist Studies. These have been generously provided by Jonathan Silk, Professor of Buddhist Studies at Leiden University, with an introduction to each.

AI Pioneer Geshe Monlam Visits the BDRC Office

Tibetan AI pioneer, Geshe Lobsang Monlam, founder and CEO of the Monlam Tibetan IT Research Center visited the BDRC office on January 17, 2023. Geshe Monlam's mission to revolutionize Tibetan language technology in order to break down barriers and share Buddhist knowledge resonates with many areas of BDRC's work.

The Oldest Buddhist Manuscripts Discovered in Ladakh: The Incredible Story of the Matho Fragments

BDRC recently published online the Matho Fragments, an extremely rare collection of ancient manuscripts—these are in fact the oldest manuscripts ever discovered in Ladakh. The Matho fragments were interred in a stupa dating from the 12th century.

BDRC Remembers Tulku Thondup Rinpoche

In addition to the skillful means of writing and translating, Tulku Thondup Rinpoche also sustained the scriptural Dharma in these dark times through his long term support for BDRC. Rinpoche was a founding board member–he joined in 1999 at the inception of the organization–and helped guide the organization as a director for nearly 20 years.

Remembering E. Gene Smith and BDRC's Founding Vision

We honor our founder Gene Smith and we strive to uphold his vision. The Buddhist Digital Resource Center preserves Buddhist literature for the world.

BDRC's Newly Released Mobile App for Your iPhone or Tablet

The Buddhist Digital Resource Center is delighted to present our newly released BDRC Mobile App. The app allows users to view and search the entire BDRC library on their mobile phone, giving you access to 28 million pages of Buddhist literature via the slim iPhone or Android in your hands. The Newly Released App is available from both the Apple Store and Google Play.

BDRC Wins the 2023 Aming Tu Prize for Outstanding Creative Contribution to Digital Buddhist Studies

The Aming Tu Prize recognizes our archival platform, the Buddhist Digital Archives (BUDA), for both its practical benefits to researchers and its technological breakthroughs.

Lamyig: The Tibetan Books of Living and Traveling

One of the most interesting genres of Tibetan Buddhist literature is the lamyig text, the travel guide, or more appropriately the pilgrimage guide (a subset of lamyig, called the neyig). These travel and pilgrimage guides are not only the most accessible and useful of texts to a wide variety of readers, but they contain history, geography, biography, philosophy, religion, art and anthropology, and more.

The Journey of a Scholar and a Preservationist: Jann Ronis Celebrates Five Years as Executive Director of BDRC

Much like Gene Smith, Jann preferred to work on the ground, preserving the texts and making direct contributions to the field of Buddhism that will be felt for generations.

BDRC is Using Artificial Intelligence to Generate Wisdom, Part 2: Training AI to Crop Manuscripts

We are happy to announce the creation of an exciting new tool to crop and process manuscript images using AI, which up until now has been a laborious and manual process. Called the Segment and Crop Anything Model (SCAM), we have made the tool freely available to the public.

BDRC is Using Artificial Intelligence to Generate Wisdom

Given a large collection of 1.4 million scanned images of 5,000 text volumes and a catalog of 84,000 text titles, how can AI help us map the titles to their corresponding images? This article is an account of a successful project that used AI with humans in the loop to map these titles to their corresponding images by detecting library stamps on scanned images. We lay out our methodology and the various technical and non-technical challenges that arose in the process.

Geshe Monlam: The Man behind the Dictionary

Through a recent interview with Geshe Monlam, of the amazing Grand Monlam Tibetan Dictionary, we learned that the man behind this terrific work is a modern day Renaissance man. Read on.

Digital Dharma at the Library of Congress

Our Executive Director Dr. Jann Ronis gave a book talk at the U.S. Library of Congress on Friday, March 31st. Dr. Ronis presented the Gene Smith photography book "Digital Dharma: Recovering Wisdom," and spoke about Gene Smith and his organization's Buddhist digital preservation as well as innovations and technologies for Buddhist digital humanities for the future.

E-texts on BUDA are now Integrated with Monlam Dictionary

The greatest Tibetan dictionary, the Monlam Grand Tibetan Dictionary, is now available on BUDA where it can be used to look up the meaning of every word in our vast e-text archive.

White Lotus: The Tibetan Biography of Gene Smith

We are delighted to announce that BDRC Senior Librarian Kelsang Lhamo has published "The White Lotus Biography of Jamyang Gene Smith," her long-awaited Tibetan language biography of our founder Gene Smith.

An Interview with Dafna Yachin, Filmmaker and Author

Dafna Yachin is the indomitable director of Digital Dharma, the documentary, and now co-author of Digital Dharma: Recovering Wisdom, the companion photo book. Her deep friendship with our founder Gene Smith (1936-2010), who became her mentor, is what drove the first project.

བོད་ཀྱི་ལོ་རྒྱུས་ཡིག་ཚང་དང་འབྲེལ་བའི་སྲོལ་རྒྱུན་ས་མིང་གི་རྣམ་གཞག་དང་ཁྱད་ཆོས་ལ་དཔྱད་པ།

སྤྱིར་བོད་ཀྱི་ས་མིང་ལ་རིགས་མང་ཞིང་རྒྱ་ཆེ་ལ་ཞིབ་འཇུག་བྱེད་པར་ཡང་མ་མཐར་ས་ཁམས་རིག་པ་དང་། ལོ་རྒྱུས་རིག་པ། སྐད་བརྡ་རིག་པ་སོགས་ཆེད་ལས་སྣ་ཚོགས་ཀྱི་རྣམ་བཤད་བྱེད་ཕྱོགས་ཕུན་སུམ་ཚོགས་པ་ཞིག་ཡོད་པ་གོར་མ་ཆགས་མོད།

Karma Pakshi, the Founder of the Karmapa Lineage

On Tuesday, Jan 17th, BDRC launched a public event series with a book talk by Charles Manson about Buddhist master Karma Pakshi, advisor to the Mongol Khans and the founder of the Karmapa lineage.

Women's Works in the BDRC Archive

The Dakinis' Great Dharma Treasury, or མཁའ་འགྲོའི་ཆོས་མཛོད་ཆེན་མོ། as this small library of 53 volumes of texts by and about Tibetan women is known, showcases the overlooked brilliance of Buddhist female masters from Tibet through the centuries.

New Photo Book Celebrates Gene Smith's Life and Legacy

On Tuesday, November 1, friends and supporters of the Buddhist Digital Resource Center gathered together in New York City to celebrate the publication of a beautiful photography book, on Gene Smith, called Digital Dharma: Recovering Wisdom.

The Collected Works of Bod Khepa: The "Lost" Writings of One of Tibet's Greatest Scholars of Poetry and Medicine

This rare manuscript copy of Bod Khepa's Collected Works showcases the kind of work that BDRC does, seeking and making available these rare collections from masters whose works would be lost or inaccessible otherwise.

Tibetologists Gather in Prague from Around the World

The Buddhist Digital Resource Center is at the 16th Seminar of the International Association for Tibetan Studies—the IATS conference currently underway at Charles University in Prague in the Czech Republic! The majority of the text-based papers presented at the conference were enabled by BDRC's archive.

Meeting Mingyur Rinpoche

Mingyur Rinpoche spent two hours with BDRC staff, board members and friends discussing BDRC's essential work and the importance of textual preservation for the living Buddhist lineages.

Discovering Inner Asian Monasteries

We made a major new addition to BDRC's geo-data for Buddhist sites in the Inner Asian world, thanks to generous data sharing by the "Documentation of Mongolian Monasteries" project and Dr. Isabelle Charleux. Over time these new sites will become even more dynamic as we begin to link them with texts written or printed at these sites.

Түдэв гүний хүрээ / Tudev gunii khuree

The Nation's Librarian of Tibetan Books: How Susan Meinheit's Career Took Her From Washington D.C. to Lhasa and Back Again

At the Library of Congress, she gave life to the Tibetan Collection, shaping and defining it into one of the most valuable collections at the Library. Because of her, what began as unidentified texts collecting dust deep in storage is now a treasure that draws researchers from all over the world.

Susan Meinheit in Lhasa.

What the Buddhist Digital Archives Offers Scholars: A Case Study in Pali Literature

Dr. Petra Kieffer-Pülz is a scholar of Pali literature who has been studying a monastic boundary dispute in Sri Lanka for the past five years. Texts made available by BUDA allowed Dr. Kieffer-Pülz to study previously unsurfaced material that shed new light on this dispute.

The Authors and Translators Identification Initiative

BDRC is proud to announce a new collaboration on a scholarly project: The Authors and Translators Identification Initiative. The goal of ATII is the creation of an open source collaborative database of authors, translators and other figures involved in the creation of Indic Buddhist texts and Buddhist canons – including particularly the Tibetan and Chinese ones.

Innovation in 2022: BDRC Marks a Milestone With Its New Website

On February 1, 2022, our old library website at tbrc.org will go offline and our new library website at the Buddhist Digital Archives will become the sole gateway into our extensive digital archive. BUDA, the result of years of effort and innovation, unifies the diverse array of Buddhist texts in our library on a single platform.

HH Sakya Trizin Graces BDRC with a Visit

The Buddhist Digital Resource Center was recently honored, on November 30, with a personal visit from His Holiness the 42nd Sakya Trizin, Ratna Vajra Rinpoche, the head of the Sakya tradition of Tibetan Buddhism. Our Executive Director Jann Ronis and our expert librarians gave Sakya...

Dharma Jewels Online: The BDRC Collections

Our library platform, the Buddhist Digital Archives, is a vast ocean of Dharma texts. Please enjoy browsing a selection of our collections on BUDA. These collections are groups of texts that are part of the same preservation project, the same library, or come from a single BDRC institutional partner.

Sorting Out Tibetan Alphabetical Order

BDRC is pleased to announce that we have successfully added Tibetan Collation Rules to the CLDR. This step will bring Tibetan closer to being fully supported on websites and smartphones, and will improve the digital experience of Tibetans worldwide.

Tips & Tricks for Your BUDA Search

One of our priorities in developing BUDA was to create a great reading room experience for our users, many of whom are practitioners, researchers, and translators who spend a great deal of time poring over these Buddhist materials.

Seeking Buddhist Manuscripts in the Himalayas: The Tibetan Manuscripts Project of Vienna

As part of the University of Vienna-Tibetan Manuscripts Project and the Resources for Kanjur and Tanjur Studies project, Helmut Tauscher, Bruno Lainé and Markus Viehbeck have documented, and made accessible, valuable manuscripts from the western and southern Himalayas, including rare editions of the Kangyur and Tengyur.

Shining the Light of Dharma: How BDRC's Longest-Serving Techie Helped Bring Buddhist Texts Online

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.

Palri Parkhang in Kathmandu

Illuminating BUDA: How to Improve Your Searches

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.

Lotsawa: The Eyes of the World

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.

The Dao of Peter

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.

Indian Partners and Their Collections

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 Me!

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.

Tibetan Search Enhancements: Part 2

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.

BUDA search box

BUDA Demo Now Online

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. 

BUDA: Buddhist Digital Archives

Dan Martin's Tibetan Histories

For close to 25 years now, a leading resource in Tibetan Studies has been Dan Martin's Tibetan Histories: A Bibliography of Tibetan-Language Historical Works, Serindia Publications (London 1997). BDRC is proud to be able to now make this resource available for download.

Tibetan Histories by Dan Martin

Tibetan Treasures from the National Library of Mongolia

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.

An Introduction to BDRC's Librarians

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.

Visit from Thupten Jinpa at BDRC headquarters.

Job Posting: BDRC Seeks Fellow in Southeast Asian Manuscripts

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.

Pali manuscript in Burmese script

Treasures from Cambodia

The monastic library of Vatt Phum Thmei in Cambodia holds a remarkable collection of Buddhist texts. Digitized by BDRC, the roughly 2,500 bundles of palm-leaf manuscripts are a treasure trove of thousands of years of Cambodian cultural knowledge.

A zoomed in look at the "Code of Old Sayings"

The BUDA Network: Creating a Web of Buddhist Resources

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.

manuscript of the Mañjuśrīnāmasaṃgīti digitized in Kathmandu under the auspices of the Endangered Archives Programme at the British Library

Tibetan Medical & Astrological Literature

Following Gene's founding vision, BDRC doesn't solely focus on the preservation of strictly religious texts, but rather seeks out texts that reflect the full richness of Buddhist culture— including, for example, Medical and Astrological works in the Tibetan language.

Image 58 from bod lugs gso rig rtsa che'i dpe rnying kun btus/

The Kagyu Tradition

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.

Some of Gene's personal notebooks about Kagyu history and literature

The Nyingma Tradition

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.

Gene Smith with Dilgo Khyentse and others

Rare Bön Texts From the BDRC Archive

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

BDRC's founder, E. Gene Smith, at Menri Monastery

We're Hiring!

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).

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BDRC Board Selects Jann Ronis as New Executive Director

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

Buddhist Digital Ressource Center logo

Digitizing the National Library of Mongolia

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's Head Librarian, Karma Gongde, reviewing texts at the National Library of Mongolia

Dispatch From the Field: Nepal

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.

From left to right: Rashmi Shakya, Nabin Bajracharya (Scanning Technician), Milan Shakya (NIBS Managing Director), Travis DeTour, Miroj Shakya (Director of NIBS), Tejendra Shakya

BDRC In Thailand

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.

Support BDRC's Spring Appeal

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!

Give the gift of Dharma

The Nepalese Buddhist Sanskrit Manuscript Scanning Initiative

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.

Buddhist Digital Resource Center seeks Executive Director

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.

Buddhist Digital Ressource Center logo

BDRC Opens Office in Europe

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.

Budhist Digital Resource Center Opens Office in Europe

The Gilt Manuscripts of the Fragile Palm Leaves Collection

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

Folios from a Kammavācā manuscript

2017: Year in Review

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.

Number of volumes (online and not yet)

Khenpo Sodargye Visits BDRC

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

Khenpo Sodargye with BDRC staff

Meet BDRC's New Mobile App and Online Library for China

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."

The app's interface

Announcing the Sanskrit and Chinese Buddhist Library Network

Buddhist Digital Resource Center (BDRC) is pleased to announce the development of the Sanskrit and Chinese Buddhist Library Network.

Sanskrit and Chinese Buddhist Library

Announcing the Fragile Palm Leaves Digitization Project

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.

Fragile Palm Leaves Digitization Project

Announcing Expanded BDRC Board of Directors

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.

James Robson (left) and D. Christian Lammerts (right)

Introducing Buddhist Digital Resource Center (BDRC)

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.

Buddhist Digital Ressource Center logo

Venerable Khenchen Konchog Gyaltsen Rinpoche Visits TBRC

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

Venerable Khenchen Konchog Gyaltsen Rinpoche with TBRC staff

David Weinberger on the Future of Digital Libraries

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.

David Weinberger

Khenpo Karma Jamyang Gyaltsen Visits TBRC

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.

Khenpo Karma Jamyang Gyaltsen

TBRC Board President Wins Prestigious Guggenheim Fellowship

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.

TBRC Board President Leonard W.J. van der Kuijp

Kyabgön Phakchok Rinpoche Visits TBRC

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.

Kyabgön Phakchok Rinpoche with TBRC staff and Lama Willa Miller

Help TBRC Keep Scanning Tibetan Texts!

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!

The TBRC Cambridge office scanner

The Digital Woodblock – Reprinting the Ragya Kanjur from TBRC Scans

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.

Ragya Kanjur Archival Scan

Matthieu Ricard Visits TBRC

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.

Matthieu Ricard and a handful of TBRC staff

Mindrolling Jetsün Khandro Rinpoche Visits TBRC

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.

H.H. Khandro Rinpoche and Executive Director Jeff Wallman at TBRC

TBRC Brings Tibetan Manuscripts onto the Google Cultural Institute

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.

Naropa-The Dauntless

The Hunt for the Ragya Kangyur

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.

Ragya Monastery text

His Holiness Gyalwang Karmapa Visits TBRC

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.

His Holiness the Karmapa blessing the TBRC office

The Library of Congress Rockhill Kangyur Release

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.

Pages from the Degge Kangyur

Diving into the Backlog, Bringing Wisdom to Light

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 discovery from the pages of The History of the 84 Mahasiddhas.

TBRC launches collaboration with SOAS to improve access to Tibetan digital texts

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.

Launching Collaboration with SOAS

Gene's Vision for TBRC

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

Running Out of Disk Space as We Approach 10 Million Pages

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 .

BDRC servers

Article about Gene's Life Story Published in Prestigious Chinese Magazine

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

TBRC Talks: A Rule Based Tagger for Classical Tibetan, Tuesday 11/4

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

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Peter Gruber, In Memoriam

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.

Peter Gruber

Remembering Dezhung Rinpoche and Gene Smith

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.

Dezhung Rinpoche

TBRC Talks: Scholars and Scribes Friday, 10/10

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

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How to Use the Tibetan eText Repository

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

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Lineage Transmission Research: The Backstory

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.

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The Lineage Transmission Knowledge Model

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

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Tibetan Tulku Lines and Networks

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.

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TBRC – Harvard Partnership to Support the Long-Term Preservation of Tibetan Texts

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.

Tibetan Search Enhancements

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

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TBRC Phonetic Tulku Titles

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.

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The Nyingma Kama Collections

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.

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TBRC on Public Radio International

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.

TBRC on Public Radio International

The impact of donations

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.

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TBRC in the NY Times!

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.

TBRC in the NY Times!

Talk with Prof. John Dunne

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

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  • Highlights from the archive

Featuring Women Writers in the BDRC Archive

The BDRC archive has doubled the number of contemporary women writers and figures represented; an important step towards equality and full representation of Tibetan women in the global knowledge commons.

tsering-wangmo-dhompa-776x1024 copy

New Insights from the World of 19th and Early 20th Century Buddhist Studies

BDRC is pleased to announce three valuable additions to the archive which will be of enormous interest to students of Tibetan and Buddhist Studies. These have been generously provided by Jonathan Silk, Professor of Buddhist Studies at Leiden University, with an introduction to each.

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AI Pioneer Geshe Monlam Visits the BDRC Office

Tibetan AI pioneer, Geshe Lobsang Monlam, founder and CEO of the Monlam Tibetan IT Research Center visited the BDRC office on January 17, 2023. Geshe Monlam's mission to revolutionize Tibetan language technology in order to break down barriers and share Buddhist knowledge resonates with many areas of BDRC's work.

Monlam Visit2

The Oldest Buddhist Manuscripts Discovered in Ladakh: The Incredible Story of the Matho Fragments

BDRC recently published online the Matho Fragments, an extremely rare collection of ancient manuscripts—these are in fact the oldest manuscripts ever discovered in Ladakh. The Matho fragments were interred in a stupa dating from the 12th century.

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BDRC Remembers Tulku Thondup Rinpoche

In addition to the skillful means of writing and translating, Tulku Thondup Rinpoche also sustained the scriptural Dharma in these dark times through his long term support for BDRC. Rinpoche was a founding board member–he joined in 1999 at the inception of the organization–and helped guide the organization as a director for nearly 20 years.

Tulku_Thondup

Remembering E. Gene Smith and BDRC's Founding Vision

We honor our founder Gene Smith and we strive to uphold his vision. The Buddhist Digital Resource Center preserves Buddhist literature for the world.

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BDRC's Newly Released Mobile App for Your iPhone or Tablet

The Buddhist Digital Resource Center is delighted to present our newly released BDRC Mobile App. The app allows users to view and search the entire BDRC library on their mobile phone, giving you access to 28 million pages of Buddhist literature via the slim iPhone or Android in your hands. The Newly Released App is available from both the Apple Store and Google Play.

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BDRC Wins the 2023 Aming Tu Prize for Outstanding Creative Contribution to Digital Buddhist Studies

The Aming Tu Prize recognizes our archival platform, the Buddhist Digital Archives (BUDA), for both its practical benefits to researchers and its technological breakthroughs.

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Lamyig: The Tibetan Books of Living and Traveling

One of the most interesting genres of Tibetan Buddhist literature is the lamyig text, the travel guide, or more appropriately the pilgrimage guide (a subset of lamyig, called the neyig). These travel and pilgrimage guides are not only the most accessible and useful of texts to a wide variety of readers, but they contain history, geography, biography, philosophy, religion, art and anthropology, and more.

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The Journey of a Scholar and a Preservationist: Jann Ronis Celebrates Five Years as Executive Director of BDRC

Much like Gene Smith, Jann preferred to work on the ground, preserving the texts and making direct contributions to the field of Buddhism that will be felt for generations.

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BDRC is Using Artificial Intelligence to Generate Wisdom, Part 2: Training AI to Crop Manuscripts

We are happy to announce the creation of an exciting new tool to crop and process manuscript images using AI, which up until now has been a laborious and manual process. Called the Segment and Crop Anything Model (SCAM), we have made the tool freely available to the public.

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BDRC is Using Artificial Intelligence to Generate Wisdom

Given a large collection of 1.4 million scanned images of 5,000 text volumes and a catalog of 84,000 text titles, how can AI help us map the titles to their corresponding images? This article is an account of a successful project that used AI with humans in the loop to map these titles to their corresponding images by detecting library stamps on scanned images. We lay out our methodology and the various technical and non-technical challenges that arose in the process.

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Geshe Monlam: The Man behind the Dictionary

Through a recent interview with Geshe Monlam, of the amazing Grand Monlam Tibetan Dictionary, we learned that the man behind this terrific work is a modern day Renaissance man. Read on.

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Digital Dharma at the Library of Congress

Our Executive Director Dr. Jann Ronis gave a book talk at the U.S. Library of Congress on Friday, March 31st. Dr. Ronis presented the Gene Smith photography book "Digital Dharma: Recovering Wisdom," and spoke about Gene Smith and his organization's Buddhist digital preservation as well as innovations and technologies for Buddhist digital humanities for the future.

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E-texts on BUDA are now Integrated with Monlam Dictionary

The greatest Tibetan dictionary, the Monlam Grand Tibetan Dictionary, is now available on BUDA where it can be used to look up the meaning of every word in our vast e-text archive.

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White Lotus: The Tibetan Biography of Gene Smith

We are delighted to announce that BDRC Senior Librarian Kelsang Lhamo has published "The White Lotus Biography of Jamyang Gene Smith," her long-awaited Tibetan language biography of our founder Gene Smith.

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An Interview with Dafna Yachin, Filmmaker and Author

Dafna Yachin is the indomitable director of Digital Dharma, the documentary, and now co-author of Digital Dharma: Recovering Wisdom, the companion photo book. Her deep friendship with our founder Gene Smith (1936-2010), who became her mentor, is what drove the first project.

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བོད་ཀྱི་ལོ་རྒྱུས་ཡིག་ཚང་དང་འབྲེལ་བའི་སྲོལ་རྒྱུན་ས་མིང་གི་རྣམ་གཞག་དང་ཁྱད་ཆོས་ལ་དཔྱད་པ།

སྤྱིར་བོད་ཀྱི་ས་མིང་ལ་རིགས་མང་ཞིང་རྒྱ་ཆེ་ལ་ཞིབ་འཇུག་བྱེད་པར་ཡང་མ་མཐར་ས་ཁམས་རིག་པ་དང་། ལོ་རྒྱུས་རིག་པ། སྐད་བརྡ་རིག་པ་སོགས་ཆེད་ལས་སྣ་ཚོགས་ཀྱི་རྣམ་བཤད་བྱེད་ཕྱོགས་ཕུན་སུམ་ཚོགས་པ་ཞིག་ཡོད་པ་གོར་མ་ཆགས་མོད།

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Karma Pakshi, the Founder of the Karmapa Lineage

On Tuesday, Jan 17th, BDRC launched a public event series with a book talk by Charles Manson about Buddhist master Karma Pakshi, advisor to the Mongol Khans and the founder of the Karmapa lineage.

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Women's Works in the BDRC Archive

The Dakinis' Great Dharma Treasury, or མཁའ་འགྲོའི་ཆོས་མཛོད་ཆེན་མོ། as this small library of 53 volumes of texts by and about Tibetan women is known, showcases the overlooked brilliance of Buddhist female masters from Tibet through the centuries.

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New Photo Book Celebrates Gene Smith's Life and Legacy

On Tuesday, November 1, friends and supporters of the Buddhist Digital Resource Center gathered together in New York City to celebrate the publication of a beautiful photography book, on Gene Smith, called Digital Dharma: Recovering Wisdom.

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The Collected Works of Bod Khepa: The "Lost" Writings of One of Tibet's Greatest Scholars of Poetry and Medicine

This rare manuscript copy of Bod Khepa's Collected Works showcases the kind of work that BDRC does, seeking and making available these rare collections from masters whose works would be lost or inaccessible otherwise.

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Tibetologists Gather in Prague from Around the World

The Buddhist Digital Resource Center is at the 16th Seminar of the International Association for Tibetan Studies—the IATS conference currently underway at Charles University in Prague in the Czech Republic! The majority of the text-based papers presented at the conference were enabled by BDRC's archive.

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Meeting Mingyur Rinpoche

Mingyur Rinpoche spent two hours with BDRC staff, board members and friends discussing BDRC's essential work and the importance of textual preservation for the living Buddhist lineages.

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Discovering Inner Asian Monasteries

We made a major new addition to BDRC's geo-data for Buddhist sites in the Inner Asian world, thanks to generous data sharing by the "Documentation of Mongolian Monasteries" project and Dr. Isabelle Charleux. Over time these new sites will become even more dynamic as we begin to link them with texts written or printed at these sites.

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The Nation's Librarian of Tibetan Books: How Susan Meinheit's Career Took Her From Washington D.C. to Lhasa and Back Again

At the Library of Congress, she gave life to the Tibetan Collection, shaping and defining it into one of the most valuable collections at the Library. Because of her, what began as unidentified texts collecting dust deep in storage is now a treasure that draws researchers from all over the world.

Susan Meinheit in Lhasa.

What the Buddhist Digital Archives Offers Scholars: A Case Study in Pali Literature

Dr. Petra Kieffer-Pülz is a scholar of Pali literature who has been studying a monastic boundary dispute in Sri Lanka for the past five years. Texts made available by BUDA allowed Dr. Kieffer-Pülz to study previously unsurfaced material that shed new light on this dispute.

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The Authors and Translators Identification Initiative

BDRC is proud to announce a new collaboration on a scholarly project: The Authors and Translators Identification Initiative. The goal of ATII is the creation of an open source collaborative database of authors, translators and other figures involved in the creation of Indic Buddhist texts and Buddhist canons – including particularly the Tibetan and Chinese ones.

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Innovation in 2022: BDRC Marks a Milestone With Its New Website

On February 1, 2022, our old library website at tbrc.org will go offline and our new library website at the Buddhist Digital Archives will become the sole gateway into our extensive digital archive. BUDA, the result of years of effort and innovation, unifies the diverse array of Buddhist texts in our library on a single platform.

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HH Sakya Trizin Graces BDRC with a Visit

The Buddhist Digital Resource Center was recently honored, on November 30, with a personal visit from His Holiness the 42nd Sakya Trizin, Ratna Vajra Rinpoche, the head of the Sakya tradition of Tibetan Buddhism. Our Executive Director Jann Ronis and our expert librarians gave Sakya...

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Dharma Jewels Online: The BDRC Collections

Our library platform, the Buddhist Digital Archives, is a vast ocean of Dharma texts. Please enjoy browsing a selection of our collections on BUDA. These collections are groups of texts that are part of the same preservation project, the same library, or come from a single BDRC institutional partner.

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Sorting Out Tibetan Alphabetical Order

BDRC is pleased to announce that we have successfully added Tibetan Collation Rules to the CLDR. This step will bring Tibetan closer to being fully supported on websites and smartphones, and will improve the digital experience of Tibetans worldwide.

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Tips & Tricks for Your BUDA Search

One of our priorities in developing BUDA was to create a great reading room experience for our users, many of whom are practitioners, researchers, and translators who spend a great deal of time poring over these Buddhist materials.

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Seeking Buddhist Manuscripts in the Himalayas: The Tibetan Manuscripts Project of Vienna

As part of the University of Vienna-Tibetan Manuscripts Project and the Resources for Kanjur and Tanjur Studies project, Helmut Tauscher, Bruno Lainé and Markus Viehbeck have documented, and made accessible, valuable manuscripts from the western and southern Himalayas, including rare editions of the Kangyur and Tengyur.

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Shining the Light of Dharma: How BDRC's Longest-Serving Techie Helped Bring Buddhist Texts Online

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.

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Illuminating BUDA: How to Improve Your Searches

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.

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Lotsawa: The Eyes of the World

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.

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The Dao of Peter

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.

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Indian Partners and Their Collections

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.

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Search Me!

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.

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Tibetan Search Enhancements: Part 2

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.

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BUDA Demo Now Online

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. 

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Dan Martin's Tibetan Histories

For close to 25 years now, a leading resource in Tibetan Studies has been Dan Martin's Tibetan Histories: A Bibliography of Tibetan-Language Historical Works, Serindia Publications (London 1997). BDRC is proud to be able to now make this resource available for download.

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Tibetan Treasures from the National Library of Mongolia

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.

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An Introduction to BDRC's Librarians

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.

Visit from Thupten Jinpa at BDRC headquarters.

Job Posting: BDRC Seeks Fellow in Southeast Asian Manuscripts

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.

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Treasures from Cambodia

The monastic library of Vatt Phum Thmei in Cambodia holds a remarkable collection of Buddhist texts. Digitized by BDRC, the roughly 2,500 bundles of palm-leaf manuscripts are a treasure trove of thousands of years of Cambodian cultural knowledge.

A zoomed in look at the "Code of Old Sayings"

The BUDA Network: Creating a Web of Buddhist Resources

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.

manuscript of the Mañjuśrīnāmasaṃgīti digitized in Kathmandu under the auspices of the Endangered Archives Programme at the British Library

Tibetan Medical & Astrological Literature

Following Gene's founding vision, BDRC doesn't solely focus on the preservation of strictly religious texts, but rather seeks out texts that reflect the full richness of Buddhist culture— including, for example, Medical and Astrological works in the Tibetan language.

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The Kagyu Tradition

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.

Some of Gene's personal notebooks about Kagyu history and literature

The Nyingma Tradition

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.

Gene Smith with Dilgo Khyentse and others

Rare Bön Texts From the BDRC Archive

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

BDRC's founder, E. Gene Smith, at Menri Monastery

We're Hiring!

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).

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BDRC Board Selects Jann Ronis as New Executive Director

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

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Digitizing the National Library of Mongolia

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's Head Librarian, Karma Gongde, reviewing texts at the National Library of Mongolia

Dispatch From the Field: Nepal

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.

From left to right: Rashmi Shakya, Nabin Bajracharya (Scanning Technician), Milan Shakya (NIBS Managing Director), Travis DeTour, Miroj Shakya (Director of NIBS), Tejendra Shakya

BDRC In Thailand

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.

Budhist Digital Resource Center tests new digitization equipment

Support BDRC's Spring Appeal

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!

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The Nepalese Buddhist Sanskrit Manuscript Scanning Initiative

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.

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Buddhist Digital Resource Center seeks Executive Director

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.

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BDRC Opens Office in Europe

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.

Budhist Digital Resource Center Opens Office in Europe

The Gilt Manuscripts of the Fragile Palm Leaves Collection

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

Folios from a Kammavācā manuscript

2017: Year in Review

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.

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Khenpo Sodargye Visits BDRC

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

Khenpo Sodargye with BDRC staff

Meet BDRC's New Mobile App and Online Library for China

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."

The app's interface

Announcing the Sanskrit and Chinese Buddhist Library Network

Buddhist Digital Resource Center (BDRC) is pleased to announce the development of the Sanskrit and Chinese Buddhist Library Network.

Sanskrit and Chinese Buddhist Library

Announcing the Fragile Palm Leaves Digitization Project

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.

Fragile Palm Leaves Digitization Project

Announcing Expanded BDRC Board of Directors

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.

James Robson (left) and D. Christian Lammerts (right)

Introducing Buddhist Digital Resource Center (BDRC)

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.

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Venerable Khenchen Konchog Gyaltsen Rinpoche Visits TBRC

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

Venerable Khenchen Konchog Gyaltsen Rinpoche with TBRC staff

David Weinberger on the Future of Digital Libraries

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.

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Khenpo Karma Jamyang Gyaltsen Visits TBRC

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.

Khenpo Karma Jamyang Gyaltsen

TBRC Board President Wins Prestigious Guggenheim Fellowship

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.

TBRC Board President Leonard W.J. van der Kuijp

Kyabgön Phakchok Rinpoche Visits TBRC

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.

Kyabgön Phakchok Rinpoche with TBRC staff and Lama Willa Miller

Help TBRC Keep Scanning Tibetan Texts!

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!

The TBRC Cambridge office scanner

The Digital Woodblock – Reprinting the Ragya Kanjur from TBRC Scans

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.

Ragya Kanjur Archival Scan

Matthieu Ricard Visits TBRC

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.

Matthieu Ricard and a handful of TBRC staff

Mindrolling Jetsün Khandro Rinpoche Visits TBRC

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.

H.H. Khandro Rinpoche and Executive Director Jeff Wallman at TBRC

TBRC Brings Tibetan Manuscripts onto the Google Cultural Institute

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.

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The Hunt for the Ragya Kangyur

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.

Ragya Monastery text

His Holiness Gyalwang Karmapa Visits TBRC

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.

His Holiness the Karmapa blessing the TBRC office

The Library of Congress Rockhill Kangyur Release

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.

Pages from the Degge Kangyur

Diving into the Backlog, Bringing Wisdom to Light

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 discovery from the pages of The History of the 84 Mahasiddhas.

TBRC launches collaboration with SOAS to improve access to Tibetan digital texts

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.

Launching Collaboration with SOAS

Gene's Vision for TBRC

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

Gene-Smith

Running Out of Disk Space as We Approach 10 Million Pages

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 .

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Article about Gene's Life Story Published in Prestigious Chinese Magazine

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

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TBRC Talks: A Rule Based Tagger for Classical Tibetan, Tuesday 11/4

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

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Peter Gruber, In Memoriam

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.

Peter Gruber

Remembering Dezhung Rinpoche and Gene Smith

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.

Dezhung Rinpoche

TBRC Talks: Scholars and Scribes Friday, 10/10

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

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How to Use the Tibetan eText Repository

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

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Lineage Transmission Research: The Backstory

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.

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The Lineage Transmission Knowledge Model

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

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Tibetan Tulku Lines and Networks

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.

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TBRC – Harvard Partnership to Support the Long-Term Preservation of Tibetan Texts

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.

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Tibetan Search Enhancements

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

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TBRC Phonetic Tulku Titles

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.

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The Nyingma Kama Collections

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.

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TBRC on Public Radio International

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.

TBRC on Public Radio International

The impact of donations

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.

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TBRC in the NY Times!

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.

TBRC in the NY Times!

Talk with Prof. John Dunne

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

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