Starter Kit. Idea 384 of 500. Cluster 19
Digitisation of the palm-leaf manuscripts and colonial archives as a paid service to the libraries of the world
The mechanism, from the book
Eight World Heritage Sites and 2,300 years of records, and the country's story is told to the world by other people.
The 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.
Ask first
- Department of Archaeology. Ask what permission is needed to handle and photograph old manuscripts.
- Department of Cultural Affairs. Ask whether any national record of palm-leaf collections exists.
Check before you spend
The owner's written consent, safe handling of fragile leaves, who owns the digital copies, and what a library abroad may do with the images.
Find out these three numbers
- What do libraries abroad pay per leaf digitised and catalogued?
- How many manuscripts does one temple or family keep?
- How many leaves can you photograph and catalogue a day?
A comparison from the book
Costa Rica's forest. Chapter Eleven
"The money was never in the samples."
Sell the cataloguing and the knowledge done here, not just raw images of the leaves.
The test
Does it keep value that now leaves the island, or build the proof that lets somebody else do so?
From the appendix of Why Not Sri Lanka? by Dr Maheshika Halbeisen. The idea and the mechanism are the book's; this kit was written for the site.