As the museum consultant for JAINpedia, my main responsibilities are to ensure that an ongoing programme of related events is put together for the project. With this in mind, I have been busy working with the Victoria and Albert Museum (V&A) over the last few months to create an exciting series of activities for the Jainpedia display between 2010 and 2012. (more…)
The college is closing down tomorrow for the holidays so we won’t be around until January 2010.
However… (more…)
Last week I had the opportunity of attending the Arts & Humanities Research Fair at King’s College as a representative of the JAINpedia project. The aim of this Research Fair was to display and talk about the different arts and humanities projects based at King’s. It was an open event that allowed visitors (mainly researchers and students) to explore, talk and learn about the different research projects that are being carried out by the Centre for Computing in the Humanities (CCH).
It was a fascinating event that encouraged an exchange of ideas between different projects and allowed many people to hear for the first time about the JAINpedia project and Jainism. The JAINpedia stand, with its bright colours and poster, attracted numerous people who showed great curiosity and interest in the project.
Many students and researchers from King’s found JAINpedia a very positive learning initiative for gaining knowledge about Jainism and making the collections accessible to a wider audience.
We also took the opportunity to show them some of the beautiful digital images of manuscripts that will appear on the JAINpedia website. Everybody looked stunned and we had incredibly positive feedback.
Some students were keen to know more about the different phases of the project and how it has been developed. They looked at images of wireframes, mock-ups, as well as the blog, and we encouraged them to contribute to the blog with comments.
There’s no doubt this Research Fair has brought some valuable exposure of JAINpedia to a wider audience. I really enjoyed the experience, and I would also like to take this opportunity to thank everyone who helped make this year’s Arts and Humanities Research Fair possible.
I’m very pleased to report that a few weeks ago we received nearly all of the digital images of the manuscripts we requested from the Wellcome Library.
You will be able to start appreciating the beauty of these artefacts in these small photos.
A manuscript is made up of a number of folios. A folio is a sheet of paper or other material that has writing and sometimes an illustration on each side of the sheet. Each folio bears the handwriting of a scribe who used ink to write by hand. Many of the folios are also painted in full colour.
Kālakācāryakathā © Wellcome Library, London
For most of the manuscripts we’ll be displaying on the forthcoming full Jainpedia website, each page (one side of the sheet) has been photographed. Sometimes a manuscript will consist of only one or two folios, because of its age, its material or the conditions in which it was kept before being held in a professional curated environment. (more…)
Hello Readers! I am Rajiv Anand and I work as the museum/heritage consultant on the Jainpedia project. I have been involved since April 2009 and will see this part of the project through till April 2012.
I am glad to state that the project is going from strength to strength and developing further its professional links and contacts. It’s now a familiar brand with its major heritage partners, which are the V&A, British Library, Bodleian Library (University of Oxford) and Wellcome Library.
There will be a series of exhibitions and displays at these institutions, which house some of the most important Jain collections outside the Indian subcontinent. (more…)
