The Buddhist Digital Resource Center (BDRC) has launched its new Buddhist Digital Archives (BuDA) platform.
In 2015, the Tibetan Buddhist Resource Center changed its name to the Buddhist Digital Resource Center. This transition was accompanied by an expanded mission and collections scope to preserve Buddhist texts from all traditions alongside Tibetan materials. As part of this work, the Buddhist Digital Archives platform was created to disseminate and provide broad online access to texts from across Buddhist traditions that the BDRC has digitally preserved. This includes materials from Southeast Asia, largely in Burmese and Khmer scripts. The enhanced image viewer, etext reader, and search engine on the new website of the BDRC (bdrc.io) provide further research support and opportunities.
BDRC Director Jann Ronis presents an online demonstration of BuDA, introducing its bibliographic model and the newly available non-Tibetan content, as well as explaining the main functions of the archive. This demonstration was co-hosted by the Cheng Yu Tung East Asian Library and the Robert H.N. Ho Family Foundation Centre for Buddhist Studies at the University of Toronto, and the C.V. Starr East Asian Library at Columbia University for invited affiliates of Columbia University and the University of Toronto to mark the three-year renewal of Columbia University and the University of Toronto's CU-UT Tibetan Collection Development & Services Agreement.