New Staff Introduction: Smt. Pushti Devi Dasi

Pushti Devi Dasi (Papiya Chatterjee) joined BRC in May. She is serving in both the Membership  Department and the Publications Department. 

Pushti joined the Iskcon movement in Kolkata in 1987. She served in Sri Sri Radha Govinda’s kitchen at the Kolkata temple for several years and later became the personal assistant of then temple president, Adiridaran Das. She gained a lot of experience during her service there –  organising membership/donations,maintaining correspondences, managing event planning, etc. 

After she married, she lived for many years in the US with her family and served in the New Dwarka in Los Angeles. She returned to India in 2010. 

She is very enthusiastic to serve at BRC. “I’m very excited about our upcoming publications and assisting with the Fund Raising program,” she said. “I look forward to learning a lot and adding to my experience.”

New Technology Advisor at BRC

Mr. Indranil Das Gupta of L2C2 Technologies has joined the BRC team as a consultant. He is a software architect and has been a Free and Open Source (FOSS) technology and is expert in Koha, the world’s first and also the largest Open Source Integrated Library Software.

He is working diligently along with BRC Librarian Angelo Pugliese (Acyuta Prabhu) to implement systems for our server to be able to upload huge amounts of content without crashing.

Currently, they are designing a framework for manuscripts; including a cataloging form where details are given (meta data) including title, author, and year to increase accessibility for consultation by scholars and library patrons online.

This manuscript framework is an entirely new contribution to library technology, and will be made available as open source to libraries worldwide that are using the Koha cataloging system. BRC is very pleased to be involved with such a exciting and cutting-edge project. 

BRC celebrates 5th Year Anniversary, June 2014

We put together a special edition in honor of completing 5 years. Click on this link to read:

BRC's 5th Anniversary Newsletter

The review includes overviews of:

• Manuscript mission
• Improvements to our facilities
• Acquisition of new office space for translation department
• New additions to BRC staff
• Sundar Vidyabinode Collection cataloguing progress, including Nadia Prakash

New Staff Appointments

We are very happy to announce the appointment of Sriman Acyuta dasa as our new head librarian. Acyuta prabhu has been involved from the BRC’'s inception but now he has made himself available for full time work. 

Acyuta Prabhu is pictured at far left

Acyuta brings with him 28 years of devotional service. He has been engaged in research for almost 20 years in the major libraries and cultural/academic institutions of Kolkata. He has studied Library Science and all its connected subjects in two Indian universities (IGNOU and ICFAI), and has his own personal library of over 11,000 books. He has acquired expertise in the use of software and web resources connected with books & library science and his addition to the team is a very welcome plus. Beginning January 1, 2011 he will focus on setting up our computer system, professional library software and website.




We have also hired a new assistant for the library, Ashish Chakroborty. Ashish is a B. Sc. and is engaged in scanning the many hundreds of books in our library at a current rate of about 400 pages per day. This is about the limit for the simple book scanner we have and our plan is to apply for a grant to upgrade to a professional semi-automated model that can do 700 pages per hour.

Bharati Roy began working with ISKCON scholars in the early 1980s, doing extensive research for the Institute for Vaisnava Studies (IVS) headed by Garuda dasa (Dr. Graham Schweig) in Bengal and Jaipur, and also translation work for various individual scholars. She has worked for the last year as the BRC librarian but field research is where her heart is.

BRC Operations Manager Janakaraja Prabhu with Smt. Bharati Roy and Asis Chakroborty