South Asia Studies

Spring 2005 | Volume 24, Number 3 | Download PDF

South Asia Studies

President's Message: South Asia Studies

The Center for Research Libraries has collected and preserved archives and heritage materials from South Asia and made them available to scholars since its founding in 1949. This issue of Focus reports on how the Center supports South Asian projects, programs, and scholarship.

South Asia Microform Project

Since 1967 the South Asia Microform Project (SAMP) has been preserving primary source materials that span four centuries and cover the entire subcontinent. This profile highlights the impressive range and depth of the collections formed by SAMP cooperative collecting.


Digital South Asia Libraries

The Digital South Asia Library (DSAL) is a gateway to thousands of online South Asia resources: traditional text materials, still images, audio, cartographic, archaeological records, and other materials. The U.S. Department of Education recently awarded DSAL funding to further expand the pool of materials available for research.

A Union Catalogue for South Asia

An update on the South Asia Union Catalogue highlighting the objectives and continuous accomplishments of an initiative designed to create a comprehensive historical bibliography of South Asia publications dating from the year 1556 to present.

Rare Literary Gems: The Works of Kabir and Premchand at CRL

Biographical profiles of two South Asian literary masters and the Center's holdings of their works on microfilm, including original works and commentaries in Sanskrit, Hindi, Bengali, and English.

DSAL’s Digital Jewel

The digital photo archive contains more than 50,000 images documenting the history of Indian art and archaeology. The archive will eventually feature the 120,000-plus images collected in the Encyclopaedia of Indian Temple Architecture.

Center for South Asia Libraries

Created for the benefit of South Asian and American scholars, the Center for South Asia Libraries facilitates scholarly research and teaching by preserving and making available heritage materials from India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, Nepal, and Sri Lanka.


Digital Dictionaries of South Asia

The online library will make available at least 55 dictionaries of South Asian languages for scholars, language students, educators, and others. The article includes spoken word audio in Pashto, a language of Afghanistan.

Landholders and laborers, Kabul, Afghanistan, 1879-80. Photograph by John Burke. From the Curzon Collection in the British Library.