BRC Participates in International Open Access Week

BRC was pleased to have the opportunity to participate in Open Access Week this year from the 24-30 of October. Open Access Week is an event whose purpose is to bring awareness to the potential applications and benefits of Open Access to scholarship and research throughout the world.

BRC's participation is in line with our commitment to preservation and dissemination, Offering our digitized material freely to the public domain. The Open Access Movement supports the idea that research should be freely accessible online, at no cost to anyone.This free exchange of ideas facilitates more rapid advances in research of many kinds.

In only seven days, BRC scanned 2681 pages from 15 rare books and uploaded them, a truly amazing feat made possible to the dedication and commitment of our Head Librarian, Angelo Pugliese (Acyuta Dasa,) and L2C2 Technologies Consultant, Indranil Das Gupta.

A Request For Volunteers to Help With Cataloging

A fully searchable database is of utmost importance to a research library's purpose. It is essential to make our resources easily available for researchers. We have recently acquired over 3000 extremely rare academic journals on various topics within Indian Philosophy and Religion. The titles of the articles describe fascinating and obscure topics such as the first discussions on developing Roman script for Indian languages, for example.

Although BRC has only one scanner in our facility, our Head Librarian, Acyuta Das has innovated a second work station that utilizes a smart phone for potential volunteers to help with creating electronic image files. After the table of contents are scanned in these journals, OCR (optical corrector recognition) software will identify the text and convert it in such a way that we can make it part fo a searchable database.

In order to make any significant progress in our indexing, we need your help. Please contact Acyuta Prabhu, BRC Head Librarian at acyuta@brcindia.com. He will be happy to engage you in this service.

BRC Establishes Open Source Integrated Library System (Koha)

BRC staff is in the process of implementing some new technological guidance we've acquired with the great help of Koha expert, Indranil Das Gupta. After many trials and errors, we have finally worked out the optimal system for processing the digitization workflow for our rare book and manuscript project. We are using Koha ILS as both a catalog as well as their digital repository.

Koha is generally considered to be the first open source library automation system, and originated in 1999. ILS stands for open source integrated library systems. BRC is exploring cutting edge ways to implement Koha, innovating and testing new applications of this system.

An Overview of BRC's Process of Adding Files to the Digital Catalog

We wanted to provide a more detailed update about the processes involved from scanning texts to uploading to our digital catalog for those among you who are interested in tech-related details:

This illustration describes the steps in the process that are involved from generating the initial image from a scan or photo until we upload the file for reading and accessing from our digital database.


- compiled by BRC's Tech consultant, Indranil Das Gupta

Thanking Our Recent Donors, Late 2016

We humbly thank those who have so generously donated to BRC most recently: *

• Ambarish Das, USA, $25,000.00 
• Gopal Bhatta Das, USA, $2,500.00
• Hridayananda das Goswami, $500.00
• Cittahari das, Australia, $2,000.00 (AUD)
• Yogesvara das, USA, $500.00 (AUD)
• Janananda Goswami, $2,750.00 (AUD)
• Urmila Devi Dasi, USA, $1000.00
• Vasudev and Bhagavati, Fiji, $1100.00
• Navin Krsna das, USA, $1,000.00
• Balaramdesh Yatra, $2,500.00
• Srivallabha das, Damodardesh, $1,000.00
• Bhakti Charu Swami, $10,000.00 INR per month
• BBT International, $2500.00
• Madhusevita Das, Scotland, £6000.00

We strive to stay up to date on your latest contact information. If you have not heard from us for a while, we may not have your latest contact information. It is important for us to remember you and help you stay up to date and connected to our latest service activities. Please email Mahalakshmi Dasi, BRC Membership Coordinator. 



* Although we strive to keep good records and communications, occasionally we inadvertently leave someone off this list. Please notify us if we left you off and kindly accept our apology.