A Great List of Online Resources for Tibetan Studies

Sunbird Sipping Nectar

Somehow it escaped my attention until just today, but a fantastic listing of online resources for Tibetan Studies has been there at the University of Virginia’s Tibetan and Himalayan Library for as long as two years now. Why did no one tell me? Just go there and scroll down through the many attractions the web has to offer, nicely divided into types. That means if you are looking for online dictionaries, you get a discreet list of them with tappable links to get to the one of your choice in the twinkling of an eye, likewise with sites that offer downloadable PDFs and OCRable texts.

To get there go here:  https://thlib.org/terms/reference-resources/#/

In case the link fails you, try a websearch for “Key Tibetan Reference Resources.” I must warn you ahead of time, it may trigger your manic-depressive mood swings, at first feeling overwhelmed by how much is out there that you will never be able to see or download or understand... followed by a sense of elation about how much is out there and so quickly available to yourself and to others. Me? I find myself in between, yet I was thrilled to see, for instance, that the Library of Tibetan Works and Archives has made their rare manuscripts available online (to find it go to that link I just gave you and look for it for yourself).*

It is embarrassing to admit, but the listing at Tibetan and Himalayan Library is so much better arranged, so much more comprehensive, and so much more up-to-date than what you see in my sidebar, I’m thinking about how I might give most of it a toss out the window. On second thought, dead links are a sad fact of the internet and you find their tombstones everywhere, so why not let things be? What do you think? Either way it looks like work. 

(*One thing I observed while inspecting the THLib listing is just how few blogs specifically about Tibet are out there.**  Why don’t you start one up? I heard they are about to become cool again.)

[**But, well, they haven’t listed Tibetan-written or Tibetan-language blogs for some reason. ཁབ་བརྡ་, to give just one example, would have been a very obvious one to include. I would have left out all those travel blogs, too, just as they did.]

While I’m making referrals I thought I would point you toward Alexander A. Smith’s new video series on Tibetan history.  

If the video doesn’t immediately pop up on your screen, try this link to the channel named Armchair Academics. Especially since YouTube offerings overall have become so dreadful in recent months, it is encouraging to see things of real education value for a change.

• If you have more suggestions to make, please let us know in the comments. I also thought about the Starr Library at Columbia University. It has particularly rich listings of Tibetan studies resources of various kinds. For some reason it is not findable in the listing of listings in THLib, so I think it should be added. It is through it that you get access to the Tibet Mirror newspaper database, as well as the papers of Lama Anagarika Govinda, to mention two of its superbly fascinating offerings.

Disclaimer: All the creators of the resources mentioned in this blog are good friends, it is true, but they never asked me to praise or criticize them, let alone make links to their digital realms, and they don’t receive monetary benefits from this any more than I do. Well, maybe a little more, I have no idea, really. I’ll ask them.