The preservation of Tibetan relics has entered the digital era, and the program has achieved initial results, announced Numu, curator of the Tibet Public Library on Oct. 28, China Tibet News reported.

Currently, many official and private institutions are using new technology to preserve historical relics. In 2006, the Tibet Academy of Social Sciences put in place a digital archive of palm leaf manuscripts in Sanskrit. There are 60,000 known leaves, 120,000 copies and 1000 kinds of palm leaf manuscripts that have been discovered; part of the scripts have been digitized.

On Oct.6, Tibet University and China Tibetology Research Center signed a joint agreement to establish a world-class "Tibetan literature resource center" including historical relics, Tibetan journals and historical records.

According to the Tibet College of Tibetan Medicine, over 800 volumes of ancient literature on Tibetan medicine are now digitized and available online. Currently, this system is open exclusively on the Intranet site of the Tibet College of Tibetan Medicine, and will be open to the public soon.

The Tibetan Historical Relics Preservation Center was jointly established by the Sera Monastery and Johkang Monastery. Palbar Tsering, head of the Center said, every day the center digitizes 10 volumes of historical relics, including Buddhist scriptures, Hetuvidya, history and literature.

Numu said，the Tibetan Historical Relics Preservation Center has officially begun its work. Until now, archive has been mostly completed except in Shigatse and Chamdo. In the future, when archiving a record, the Center will conduct a thorough survey and report and maintain all fields of each record. This will establish a comprehensive database called the "Joint Catalogue of Tibetan Historical Relics".

Palbar Tsering, said first the center creates an entry in its catalogue, and then adds digital images of the items by using scanners and digital cameras. The record is made available after the quality of the image is approved.

In July 2010, the Center (affiliated with the Tibet Public Library) was officially launched and began its work of preserving historical relics. The records have been basically completed. In the future, the Center will record, report and manage the data and add it to the "Joint Catalogue of Tibetan Historical Relics".

The digitization project includes 150 digitized books, such as The Catalogue of Historical Relics of the Public Library of the Tibet Autonomous Region, the Tibet Ancient Studies Coursebook and the National Catalogue of Ancient Precious Books.

According to Numu, the next step is to standardize the digitization of Tibetan historical relics and eventually provide comprehensive digital resources on Tibetology.