Open Access week 2024 (South/Southeast Asia) – Global Studies Blog

As part of Open Access Week 2024 events (October 21-27; theme Community Over Commercialization), there was a presentation on: Digitizing Vietnam Project: Increasing Access to Vietnam Studies Materials
Presenters: Hoang Minh Vu, Ph.D. (Faculty member, History and Vietnam Studies, Fulbright University Vietnam); Phuong Tram Nguyen, Ph.D. (Digital Curator, Digitizing Vietnam Project, Weatherhead East Asian Institute, Columbia University); Van Le Nguyen Tuong, MA (Digital Humanities Librarian, Digitizing Vietnam Project, Vietnam Studies Center, Fulbright University Vietnam); Phuc Hoang Le, BA (Digital Architect, Digitizing Vietnam Project, Weatherhead East Asian Institute, Columbia University)
Moderator: Gary Hausman
Summary: Digitizing Vietnam is a framework for an inter institutional network of digital humanities research. The intention is to build a digital hub for Vietnam studies that brings together computer science professionals and academics pursuing digital humanities research to jointly develop digital data repositories with digital tools for analysis built around those repositories. The project is dedicated to Open Access, long term archival maintenance with proper attribution, and multiple institutional partners. Components include a digital workbench and repository, Vietnam for educators related pedagogical resources, and tools such as digital dictionaries, indices, exhibition halls, and fully searchable texts. Faculty involved in the project are from Columbia University and Fulbright University Vietnam, including John Phan, Vũ Minh Hoáng, Lien-Hang Nguyen, and Nguyẽn Nam. The project grant provides for three positions: a Columbia digital curator (Tram Phuong Nguyen), a CU-FU digital designer (Van Nguyen Tuong Le), and a Fulbright Digital Librarian (Phuc Hoang Le). Current partners include SEADL and Cornell University, the Institute for Han-Nom Studies, Vietnam National University, University of Social Sciences and Humanities, and the Computational Linguistics Center at University of Science of VNU. Various future partners are anticipated. Major collections include language (Hán-Nõm, language script philology), gender (Nữ-giới-chung, a women’s magazine), war history (Vietnam War Collection, Vietnamese Studies Journal), music (Trịnh Công Sơn Oral history archives related to a renowned Vietnamese songwriter), and urban life (Saigon Chronicles, a collection of student film documentaries). Podcasts enhance community outreach, and an AI powered chatbot, intended to allow the archives “to speak,” is under development. A prototype website was demoed, along with digital Optical Character Recognition tools for interacting with Chữ Nôm text [Vietnamese in Chinese characters].

In South Asia developments, CONSALD (Committee on South Asian Libraries and Documentation) held the Fall 2024 biannual meeting. Several Open Access sites and resources were discussed at the meeting, including:

Herstories Project (Sri Lanka archival histories of mothers in South & North Sri Lanka)

Herstories Project Sri Lanka oral history archives (Women’s histories of sex work: narratives of conflict, courage and survival)

Memory Map (Sri Lanka community memorialization project)

South Asian Literary Recordings Project (updates at the Library of Congress)

Hindūstān = Hindostan = Hindostāna (Library of Congress, new digital editions in Hindi and Urdu of this serial, 1915-1918)

The annual South Asian Cooperative Collection Development Workshop (2024) was held on the theme of the landscape of e-book publishing in South Asia. Presentations covered Open Access as well as commercial publishers.

The Columbia University Libraries hold extensive research collections from and about South & Southeast Asia. For further questions, please contact:  Gary Hausman, South Asian Studies Studies Librarian: [email protected], Global Studies, Columbia University Libraries