Case Studies of four libraries in Nepal

Abstract

Indeed Manuscripts are ancient, unique, valuable, rare documents preserved by our ancestors and that plays a significant role of the documentary heritage of the people in the country and it should not be lost. Those documents are the recorded history, culture and identity of a nation. Realizing its value and significant it has become the concern of national and international communities for storage, preservation, digitization, and access through creating standard metadata. Large number of heritage related documents are available in South East Asia region including Nepal. The manuscript contains vast amount of knowledge on subjects like Buddhism tradition and belief, customary laws, tradition medicines, astrology, history folktales, worship of gods and goddesses which are written in Sanskrit, old Newari language, Pali and so on. In the case of Nepal, the country possesses century old vast quantities of valuable manuscripts mostly written in gold and silver letters in varied language like Sanskrit, Hindi, Awadhi, which attract scholars from all over the world. Libraries, archives, museum, religious people have stored and preserved those oldest and rarest manuscripts in their own way. Regarding digitization aspect too those institutions and libraries are adopting different standards particularly with respect to metadata of the materials. This is the same mostly all over south and South- East Asia including Nepal. However, what is more important to do is to develop standard method for metadata production before preserving and digitization with an aim to bring uniformity in data management and accessibility of data of manuscripts all over the world.