ALL has been awarded a competitive Major Project Grant from the British Library’s Endangered Archives Programme for the project “Digitization and Preservation of a Historic Collection of Mongolian Authors at the National Library of Mongolia.”
The project aims to select and preserve 500 volumes of unique and fragile material written by Mongolian authors in Tibetan language between 1700 and 1900 held at the National Library of Mongolia (NLM). Many volumes lack proper identification, include miscellaneous writings, and have not been opened in hundreds of years. Covering a wide array of topics, including social commentaries, medicine, biography, architecture, poetics, and music, the materials serve as a record of Mongolian culture and scholarship of essential significance both for Mongolians and for international scholars, researchers, and historians of Mongolia. Importantly, these writings express Mongolian perspectives on Buddhism, a rich and understudied topic. This project will be carried out in cooperation with the National Library of Mongolia and with the invaluable support of Sainbileg Byambadorj, who manages the digitization of the Tibetan collection at NLM.
The British Library’s Endangered Archives Programme (EAP) facilitates the digitization of archives that are in danger of physical deterioration. EAP offers grants to thirty select projects each year to preserve culturally important and vulnerable archives through digitisation. According to Lisbet Rausing, Co-Founder of the EAP, “The Endangered Archives Programme captures forgotten and still not written histories, often suppressed or marginalized. It gives voice to the voiceless: it opens a dialogue with global humanity’s multiple pasts. It is a library of history still waiting to be written.”
ALL is grateful for the funding support of the Endangered Archives Programme, and we are honored to carry out this vital project in collaboration with the National Library of Mongolia.
