Foreign language Reference Library

Foreign Language Reference Library

In accordance with the recommendation made by the Review Committee, Gov. of India in May 1975 the reading room has been converted into the reference section with effect from January 1976.

As per recommendation of the same committee, books and other literature will not be acceptable as in donations of the material is neither related nor relevant to Tibetology fields related to the various aspects of Tibetan study.

During that fiscal year, the reference section of the library has been able to purchase 155 books in English on the cultural religious and ethnic history of the himalayan region in general and of Tibet, Bhutan & Sikkim.

The American Center Library and British Council Library have come to our aid by extending borrower’s privileges to us.

The reference section started functioning from 1977. Before that it was functioning as a reading room.

The Foreign Language Reference Library(F.L.R.L) has a collection of more than 25,688 volumes both books and journals predominantly dealing with Buddhist philosophy, language, art and culture, medicine, geography, travel, history and the politics of Tibet and the Himalayan region.

These materials are primarily in English but also include most of the European and Asian languages. We have 339 thesis copies at present mostly related with Tibetan studies.

More than 75 journals and periodicals of related interest are currently received and displayed. The research scholars can access to JSTOR. There is a 691 modest collection of rare and out-of-print books, 108,075 files of newspaper clippings covering the past 60 years of the Tibetan diaspora and the digitization of news clippings is around 44,601, bound collections of periodicals and files of pamphlets, brochures and other materials concerning the Tibetan community dating back to 1959.

Location of books by subject:
Books bearing class number from 100-999 are at stack room.
Reference books collection:
Reference collection including encyclopedia, dictionaries, handbook, etc. and some basic books of general nature are available on open shelves in the reading room.

Journals and magazine:
The library subscribes to journals and magazines and have volumes from publication exchange programs which are displayed in the reading room.

Holding can be accessed through an Online Public Access Catalogue (OPAC).Books are kept in a separate stack room from where librarian and its staffs retrieve them on request and have classified on the basis of subject wise and using D.D.C 23rd edition for classification.The reading room is divided between an area of large open tables and a set of individual study cubicle.

New acquisitions are received each year from various sources, in addition to outright purchases.Publication exchange programs provide volumes from other publisher, university and libraries in exchange for The Tibet Journal brought out by the LTWA. Books are also donated each year by visiting scholars and other institutions not formally part of the publication exchange program.

This department includes Public library was inaugurated on 5th June 2012.Total collection of books of Public Library is 3,497 as per accession register on 31st March 2024.

Achievements or major milestones:
Previously we used to have open rack shelves and the space was a major problem as well.Under the guidance of Geshe Lhakdor la, we have achieved many things that can be seen around the library stack room especially the drastic change in storage system of the books and journals.

The problems of storage and space was solved after the installation of the optimizer or the moving shelves.It changed the whole storage system as now we can easily move the shelves.

To improve the reading room’s basic facility, in the year 2018, the department re-organized the setting arrangement of the reading room and changed the lighting system.

The Library have a decent collection of books on Tibetan/Asian/Buddhist studies.

PhD students from various universities visits our library for their research work since our library is considered to have one of the best collection on Tibetan studies in the world. Many research scholars have also shown appreciation for our collection.

The library is very well organized since our staff works daily on the classification of the books and journals.

Research scholar can access to JSTOR which is now a days top priorities to access the entire journal published around the world which can be read and downloaded as well.

Resources (Downloadable)

Department Members