AWARD YEAR
2023
CATEGORY
Community
GOALS
Quality Education, Peace, Justice & Strong Institutions
KEYWORDS
library, NGO, Asian culture, Heritage preservation
COUNTRY
United States of America
DESIGNED BY
John C. Brady (Executive Director) & NoFormat (Design Team)
WEBSITE
https://asianlegacylibrary.org/
Asian Legacy Library
Nonprofit project aiming to protect some of the world’s rarest cultural texts for future generations
How does it work?
The Asian Legacy Library partners with preservationists, locating, scanning, and cataloguing the priceless texts to create a rich database accessible to everyone—no matter where they are.
Every step of the process, from locating these precious documents to protecting them in the digital library, is done with the same focus, precision, and expertise used during their creation centuries ago.
The discovered texts are painstakingly catalogued to ensure they are identified. After cataloguing, the texts are scanned using the finest quality digital equipment. The scanning process then produces image files which are carefully input—the laborious process of keying in, character-by-character, the content of works. The input process makes the texts searchable so that researchers, scholars, and translators can search the content of works, locating phrases, terms, people, and places. Catalogues, scans, and inputted texts are archived in our digital library for long-term safeguarding and access.
Why is it needed?
As a global non-profit organization, the ALL delivers a combination of technology, scholarship, and partnership to locate, digitally preserve, and safeguard the priceless cultural wisdom literature of the world. The Asian Legacy Library believes that safeguarding the world's cultural and literary wisdom traditions for future generations is a priority for humankind. Scholars, translators, and authors can reference the collections to keep these teaching traditions alive in the world for current and future generations.
How does it improve life?
The Asian Legacy Library is entirely funded by charitable donations from generous supporters around the globe. All funds are used for ALL’s mission to locate, digitally preserve, and safeguard some of the world’s most precious cultural, literary wisdom heritage collections.
The collective knowledge and participation in preserving literary wisdom traditions for over three decades make it a more prosperous library. By partnering with preservationists in locating, scanning, inputting, and cataloguing the texts, the product is a comprehensive, fluid, and accessible database for everyone interested.