Dharamshala: As part of the department’s Strengthening Cultural Resilience of Tibetan Communities project funded by USAID, the Department of Religion and Culture has successfully completed orientation workshops on the Tibetan Digital Library Initiative at 20 different Tibetan cultural and religious institutions, marking the beginning of the research and digitisation of scriptures.

On 13 May this year, the first orientation session was held in Dharamshala, followed by other assigned regions, namely Bylakuppe, Hunsur, Kollegal, and Mundgod, where the mentioned institutions are located. Over the span of four and a half months, the Department of Religion and Culture, in collaboration with Wadhwani AI and the Monlam IT Research Centre, conducted a series of workshops at the aforementioned Tibetan settlements on the implementation of the Tibetan Library Management System application, as well as on researching and digitising ancient scriptures.

In addition, during these orientation workshops, the task force team from the Department of Religion and Culture also participated in the project. Thus far, the initiative has completed QR code integration for 2,000 bookshelves and 70,000 master texts.