From Basic Research to Digital Archive

The Tibet Oral History Project

Melvyn Goldstein
Co-Director of the Center for Research on Tibet
John Reynold Harkness Professor of Anthropology
Case Western Reserve University 

Dr. Goldstein will discuss the process by which interview data from a series of basic research projects on Tibetan history and society are being conserved and preserved through the creation of a large digital web-archive. This project illustrates how digitally unsophisticated humanities researchers can maximize the utility of their research materials by making them available to students and scholars throughout the world via the Internet.
Melvyn Goldstein is a social anthropologist specializing in Tibetan society, history and contemporary politics as well as in anthropology and history, cross-cultural gerontology, population studies, polyandry, cultural ecology and economic development/change. He is the John Reynold Harkness Professor of Anthropology at Case Western Reserve University and Co-Director of the Center for Research on Tibet. Dr. Goldstein has conducted research in Tibet on a range of topics including nomadic pastoralism, the impact of reforms on rural Tibet, family planning and fertility, modern Tibetan history and socio-economic change.

The Distributed Production and
Dissemination of Local Histories in the Digital Era

A Case Study Based upon the Tibetan and Himalayan Library

David Germano
Director of the Tibetan and Himalayan Library
Director of the Center for Emerging Research, Scholarship and the Arts
Co-Director of the Tibet Center
Associate Professor of Tibetan and Buddhist Studies
Department of Religious Studies
University of Virginia 

Digital technologies are enabling fundamentally different approaches to the study of local histories, places, and cultures in terms of the production, integration, and dissemination of knowledge. The last fifteen years have witnessed the rise of what some have called digital humanities, but successes have largely been limited to isolated examples taking place in relationship to specific projects and thematic foci. The next fifteen years, in contrast, are likely to be marked by much broader transformation as digital approaches become integrated into the very fabric of higher education. Professor Germano will sketch out ways in which this transformation will impact upon the study of local histories, places, and cultures through reliance upon the work in the Tibetan and Himalayan Library on Tibetan and Himalayan culture.

David Germano is Director of the Tibetan and Himalayan Library (THL), Director of the Center for Emerging Research, Scholarship and the Arts, Co-Director of the Tibet Center, and an Associate Professor of Tibetan and Buddhist Studies in the Department of Religious Studies at the University of Virginia. He has worked extensively in supporting the use of digital technology to facilitate interdisciplinary and collaborative work in Tibetan Studies. His main research interests otherwise are in Tibetan religious traditions in the 10th through the 14th centuries with a special focus on the rise and development of tantric Buddhism.