CUTTACK: Want to read a newspaper which was published from Odisha a century back? Or some Odia language serials from the early 12th century that are difficult to find today?
These rare literary works that are in the possession of Utkal Gaurab Madhusudan library on the premises of Sriramachandra Bhawan in Cuttack, will soon be available at the click of a mouse. Ravenshaw University’s Center for Translation and Digital Humanities is digitising the rare literary productions under the South Asia Materials Project (SAMP) of Centre for Research Libraries, Chicago.
The seven-decade-old library which has over 5,000 rare documents, newspapers, books, documents, manuscripts, weeklies, periodicals and epics, is being maintained by Utkal Sahitya Samaj, one of the oldest and premier literary and cultural organisation of the state.
However, due to lack of space, the literary productions were kept inside the ‘almirahs’ in two rooms of the library in a crumbling state. When academicians of the center came to know about it, they approached the Centre for Research Libraries in 2020 to help them digitise the literary works. The Chicago-based centre agreed to the proposal and provided Rs 3.5 lakh for the digitisation.
“We chose to first digitise six regional Odia language serials from the early 12th century and the work has been completed. These serials are ‘Baikuntha Bhikari’, ‘Puribasi’, ‘The Ratnakar’, ‘Utkal Barta’, ‘The Swadesha Lakshmi’, and ‘The Light’. These possess a rare archival value and their digitisation will help scholars to better study the varied nature of Odia print culture during that period of time,” said Urmishree Bedamatta, an English faculty member who is also the coordinator of Center for Translation and Digital Humanities of Ravenshaw university.
These serials are not available on WorldCat, the world’s most comprehensive database of library collections, she added. Helping her in the digitisation drive is Subha Sudarshan Nayak, a journalism student of the university who is working as a research assistant in the project. After digitisation, the scanned images of the serials and metadata including the translation of the content are being uploaded to the university’s Kanika library e-resource server.
Apart from the Madhusudan library’s literary collections, the centre is digitising rare literary works and manuscripts donated to Ravenshaw university by individuals. “We have collected many rare works from the Odisha State Museum which are yet to be digitised by NIC. Besides, we have received around 40 palm leaf manuscripts from individuals from different parts of the state and their digitisation work is going on,” said Bedamatta.