Providing Global Access to Penn's Indic Manuscripts, circa 1527-1930

FAIN: PW-51547-14

University of Pennsylvania (Philadelphia, PA 19104-6205)
Nancy M. Shawcross (Project Director: July 2013 to May 2014)
David McKnight (Project Director: May 2014 to October 2017)

The cataloging and digitization of 2,850 South and Southeast Asian manuscripts dating from the 16th to the 20th centuries from the University of Pennsylvania's Rare Books and Manuscripts Library to enable free online access.

With the largest collection of Indic manuscripts in North America, the University of Pennsylvania Libraries propose to catalog and create digital facsimiles for all of its holdings. The images will be available to view, download, and harvest--free of charge, under a Creative Commons license--via the website, Penn in Hand: Selected Manuscripts. The project will provide more accurate metadata--which can be openly harvested and downloaded as XML files--than is contained in H. I. Poleman's 1938 publication, A Census of Indic Manuscripts in the United States and Canada, and will offer more access points--such as genres, uniform titles, subjects, and scribes--for researchers looking for relevant material. In addition, the names of authors and titles will be entered in their original scripts, making this Philadelphia-based collection a truly international resource. The outcome will afford global accessibility for Penn's unique materials, enhancing teaching and research worldwide.