OVERVIEW
Founded in 1988 with a grant from the David and Lucile Packard foundation, The Asian Classics Input Project is dedicated to locating, cataloging, digitally preserving, and freely distributing rare and precious collections of Tibetan and Sanskrit manuscripts. These surviving texts hold the philosophical, cultural, and religious heritage of Asian traditions dating back more than 2500 years.
ACIP strives to digitally preserve these invaluable manuscripts, which hold the great ideas of Indo-Tibetan civilization as well as the Yoga and Ayurveda traditions of ancient India because we believe that authentic ancient wisdom should be available to scholars, translators, and practitioners throughout the world, free of charge.
Our work is accomplished in several stages. First, we search the globe for surviving manuscript collections. We then catalogue their contents at various centers located mostly in Asia, where the books are carefully preserved as digital images and/or searchable e-text. These centers are staffed primarily by people who have come from the very regions where these great books were written and produced, hundreds if not thousands of years ago. Many are refugees from areas where economic or political strife threaten these great books and, sadly, even the freedom to teach, study, or own them. ACIP helps not only to preserve these rich cultural traditions, but provides these extraordinary people with an opportunity to learn new skills for supporting themselves and their families.
Since its inception in 1988, ACIP has amassed a veritable treasure trove of digitized Tibetan and Sanskrit literature, with more than two million pages digitally preserved and tens of thousands of pages of searchable e-books and catalogs distributed to the public free of charge.
MISSION
The Asian Classics Input Project (ACIP) is a not-for-profit 501(c)(3) educational organization dedicated to the preservation of ancient Asian philosophical literature.
Founded by Geshe Michael Roach in 1988, ACIP currently has preservation projects in libraries, monasteries, and institutes throughout South Asia and Mongolia. We are dedicated to creating a searchable digital database that provides scholars, academic institutions, and practitioners access to a virtual library of authentic sacred and classical texts.
At the Asian Classics Input Project, our objectives are:
- to preserve important books of Indo-Tibetan civilization and ancient India; and make these books available to all
- to support efforts that enable the great ideas found in these books to enrich the lives of all people around the world
- to aid in the preservation of Asian cultural heritages and traditions
- to assist in improving the quality of the lives of the Tibetan refugees and the entire workforce of ACIP
These objectives are realized, in part, by fostering a management philosophy in both our domestic and overseas offices that is compassionate and rewarding for all of our staff, donors, suppliers, partners and users.
BOARD OF DIRECTORS
Geshe Michael Roach
John Brady
Robert Chilton
Dr. Robert J Taylor
Elly van der Pas
Dr. Santosh Dwivedi
Geshe Jampa Dhadak
STAFF
Dan Stivers
Executive Director
Mark Trippetti
Director of Fundraising & Media
Jason Dunbar
Operations & Content Manager; Webmaster
Aaron Cram
Technological Development
Alice Carin
Accounting
Jee Chang
Fundraising & Media
Dr. Robert Taylor
Community Relations
Robert Chilton
Consultant
Santosh Dwivedi
Manager, India Operations
Sonam Lhamo
Manager, South Asian Field Office
Geshe Jampa Dadak
Director, South Asia Field Office
Ngawang Gyatso
Manager, Mongolian Field Office
N.V. Ramachandran
Director, ACIP Sanskrit Project, Kerala, India
Kelsang Tahuwa
Representative, ACIP Japan
ADVISORS
Dr. Lokesh Chandra
New Delhi
Dr. Robert Thurman
Professor, Jey Tsong Khapa Chair of Indo-Tibetan Studies
Columbia University
Dr. Artemus Engle
Rashi Gempil Ling
Freewood Acres, New Jersey
Dr. Jose Ignacio Cabezon
XIVth Dalai Lama Professor of Tibetan and Cultural Studies
UC Santa Barbara
Dr. Vesna Wallace
Professor of Religious Studies at UC Santa Barbara
Numata Professor of Buddhist Studies, Oxford University
Jeff Wallman
Executive Director, Tibetan Buddhist Resource Center
Dr. M. A. Jayashree
Anatha Foundation, Mysore
Dr. Vladimir Uspensky
Chair of Mongolian and Tibetan Studies
St. Petersburg University
St. Petersburg
Ven. Brian Smith
University of California, Riverside
(retired)
David Reigle
International Kalachakra Network
PRESERVATION
ACIP supports our colleagues and contributes to the institutions that have been so kind and supportive to our mission.
Whenever ACIP works with a library, monastery, or similar institution, whether in Nepal, India, Mongolia or Russia, we endeavor to contribute to the ongoing mission of that particular institution, so that their specific efforts to preserve the great ideas of past Asian cultures continue.
During our tenure in St. Petersburg, Russia, for instance, ACIP made significant contributions towards the upkeep of the Tibetan collections there. We have a similiar arrangement in place at the Mongolian National Library where we are assisting them in cataloging and organizing their extensive Tibetan collection.
In India, we help small native publishers of the classics find foreign sponsors for their printings. A small but steady flow of ACIP-sponsored books even makes its way back to Tibet itself, for distribution among the few Tibetans scholars and practitioners who are allowed the freedom of studying the sacred books openly.
In South India, at the Sera Mey Library, we help to publish textbooks for the curriculum with content from our project.
REFUGEE SUPPORT
In the late 1980's, the first ACIP data entry centers were set up in traditional Tibetan monastic universities located within the refugee communities of South India. These great teaching institutions had been rebuilt, with tremendous courage and dedication, by the Tibetan community-in-exile over the previous two decades.
Together, with the monastic leadership of each institution--Sera Mey in particular--ACIP created programs for the young monks to supplement their traditional education with an opportunity to train on computers and begin to save the precious books which hold their own cultural heritage.
Within a few years, a number of centers were flourishing in South India. Many operators were becoming extremely proficient on the computer, and inputting literally thousands of pages of manuscript each year. These participating students were paid for both their training, and as they progressed, their actual input work based on productivity.
We estimate that including the operators and their extended families, over 250 Tibetan refugees are fed and housed through the monthly employ of ACIP.
As the monastic input centers flourished, ACIP received requests from other Tibetan refugee communities throughout South Asia, seeking to establish centers of their own. For instance, at the Rabling Tibetan Refugee Camp in Hunsur, South India. The local representative of the Tibetan government-in-exile and ACIP management designed a program that has become the model for other centers throughout the area.
The local refugee settlement office took responsibility for locating and procuring a suitable site on which to build a new input center, and the office of His Holiness the XIVth Dalai Lama contributed the construction costs. ACIP agreed to supply all of the computers, and to pay for the training of the staff (exclusively Tibetan refugee women) for a specific period of time. The training included touch-typing, software use, and elementary hardware repair. ACIP Hunsur is now one of the organization's most productive centers, staffed almost entirely by members of the refugee farming community, who use their salaries to support their families.
A number of graduates of the ACIP training program have used their acquired knowledge to obtain work in related fields, to start their own businesses, and even to do entry and cataloging work for institutions like the United States Library of Congress office in India. Young Tibetans who touched their first computer at an ACIP center in India have gone on to direct international projects such as the St. Petersburg Cataloging Project at the Library of the Institute of Oriental Studies, in collaboration with the Russian Academy of Sciences, or to manage a similar, and equally important project located in The National Mongolian Library in the capital of Ulaanbataar.
Almost a dozen ACIP input centers are now operating around the world. ACIP has sought to ensure that it provides equal opportunities for both men and women throughout the organization.
