The Digital Himalaya project was conceived of by Professor Alan Macfarlane

Alan Macfarlane

Alan Donald James Macfarlane FBA FRHistS is a renowned anthropologist and historian and a Professor Emeritus of King's College, Cambridge. He is the author or editor of 20 books and numerous articles on the anthropology and history of England, Nepal, Japan and China. He has focused on comparative...

 and Dr Mark Turin

Mark Turin

Mark Turin is a linguist and anthropologist specialised in the Himalayas. After completing his BA in Anthropology and Archaeology from the University of Cambridge , he documented the Thangmi language spoken in Nepal and northern India for his doctoral research through the Himalayan Languages...

 as a strategy for archiving and making available valuable ethnographic materials from the Himalayan region. Based at the Department of Social Anthropology at the University of Cambridge

University of Cambridge

The University of Cambridge is a public research university located in Cambridge, United Kingdom. It is the second-oldest university in both the United Kingdom and the English-speaking world , and the seventh-oldest globally...

, the project was established in December 2000. From 2002 to 2005, the project moved to the Department of Anthropology at Cornell University

Cornell University

Cornell University is an Ivy League university located in Ithaca, New York, United States. It is a private land-grant university, receiving annual funding from the State of New York for certain educational missions...

 and began its collaboration with the University of Virginia

University of Virginia

The University of Virginia is a public research university located in Charlottesville, Virginia, United States, founded by Thomas Jefferson...

. As of 2009, Digital Himalaya is back in Cambridge.

Primary Objectives

When established in 2000, Digital Himalaya project had three primary objectives:

• To preserve in a digital medium archival anthropological materials from the Himalayan region that are quickly degenerating in their current forms, including films in various formats, still photographs, sound recordings, field notes, maps and rare journals.

• To make these resources available over broadband internet connections, coupled with an accurate search and retrieval system useful to contemporary researchers and students.

• To make these resources available on DVD
  DVD
  A DVD is an optical disc storage media format, invented and developed by Philips, Sony, Toshiba, and Panasonic in 1995. DVDs offer higher storage capacity than Compact Discs while having the same dimensions....
  
   to the descendants of the people from whom the materials were collected by making them both easily transportable and viewable in a digital medium.

First Phase

Five ethnographic collections representing a broad range of regions, ethnic groups, time periods, and themes were selected for digitisation in the first phase of the project, along with a set of maps of Nepal

Nepal

Nepal , officially the Federal Democratic Republic of Nepal, is a landlocked sovereign state located in South Asia. It is located in the Himalayas and bordered to the north by the People's Republic of China, and to the south, east, and west by the Republic of India...

and important journals on Himalayan studies.