New Electronic Resource: The Secrets of the Buddha: Preserving the Past

The Tibetan Buddhist Resource Center of New York brings to light a vast canon of Tibetan works and scrolls which have travelled from China, Egypt, India, and Indonesia and crossed into the realm of the digital. These works in English, Sanskrit, and Chinese are accessible to researchers in over 30 libraries and 25 monasteries at the scroll of a mouse in one resource, the TBRC Digital Library (http://uclibs.org/PID/159590).

All this has been made possible through the avid collecting of the renowned Buddhist scholar, Gene Smith, whose life goal was to save these rare works from destruction. Smith wanted his collection to spark future research on Tibetan Buddhism and afford scholars a wider view of early Buddhism. To accomplish his vision, Smith founded the Tibetan Buddhist Resource Center in 1999, where he moved some of the collection which was taking up space in his apartment. From this base he was able to gather a group of specialists to digitize the scrolls using the latest technologies. To date, over 12,000 volumes have been scanned through this project. This project is still going strong, even after the death of Smith in 2010, and the center hopes to finish digitizing his collection and texts they receive in the future.