ERDENE ZUU MONASTERY COLLECTION AND MONGOLIAN DIGITAL PRESERVATION NETWORK

Mongolia’s literature captures invaluable traditional knowledge, philosophies, cultural practices, medical and scientific treatises, and a way of life. Erdene Zuu Monastery, located in Mongolia’s Övörkhangai Province, is the oldest surviving Buddhist monastery in Mongolia. 

The Project aims to digitally preserve the entirety of the Erdene Zuu Monastery Library collection and to digitally preserve family and other monastery library collections via mobile digital preservation activities. The Project will involve extensive cataloging work as well as the digitization and archiving of texts at Erdene Zuu Monastery Library and within other collections, with the aims of 1.) creating a local network for digital preservation and 2. safeguarding and making accessible important materials in perpetuity. 

Under the leadership of its brilliant young director, Abbot Baasansuren Khadsuren Lama, Erdene Zuu Monastery has cemented itself as an important nexus for the local community today. Baasansuren Khadsuren Lama and the monastery’s monks have requested support from the Asian Legacy Library to undertake the effort to preserve Erdene Zuu’s collections and to establish a network for the digital preservation of local collections in the Mongolian countryside.