Digitisation of the palm-leaf manuscripts and colonial archives as a paid service to the libraries of the world

A first step

Borrow a copy stand and a good camera, and offer a temple or a family that keeps a palm-leaf manuscript to photograph it free and give them a digital copy. Use that sample to write to the librarians of three university libraries abroad with South Asian collections, stating a price per leaf digitised and catalogued. A reply asking for terms is your proof.

Who pays first

A university library abroad that wants primary sources on South Asian history and would pay for high-quality images with a catalogue.

What leaves today

The records sit on the island but are studied abroad, if at all; a paid digitisation service earns from them and keeps the originals at home.

The idea and the mechanism are from the book. The first step was written for this site as a suggestion; if you know a better one, say so.

The test

Does it keep value that now leaves the island, or build the proof that lets somebody else do so?

The only test any idea on this site has to pass. The four rules that go with it are here.

In the book

• Ch. ThreeWhat We Have Already Built
  Geoffrey Bawa's tropical modernism and the Aman resorts

More from cluster 19

• 381A film-location service: crews, permits, fixers and locations, sold to the studios of India and Europe
• 382Documentary production about the island's own stories, sold to the streaming platforms
• 383A museum shop worthy of the museum, at the National Museum, at Anuradhapura, at Galle
• 385Architecture tours of Bawa's buildings with the houses opened by their owners
• 386Heritage-building restoration firms with the skills to work on the forts and the villas
• 387A guide to everything in Sri Lanka, indexed and kept current: the places, the maps, the hotels, the courses, the makers, the trails and the seasons, published region by region, each volume written and sold from its hub

All 15 ideas in this cluster