Santipur and its neighbourhood: text and image production history from early modern Bengal through public and private collections

The project is a digitisation programme of all available rare books from the earliest time till 1950s and in Bengali language housed in selected libraries. Once the project is over the materials will be available to scholars both in-house and through http access. The original materials are located in local libraries established between 1856 and 1990; also in private collection of Mr. Prabartak Sen (the images) in his private residence. The public libraries and institutions mostly received these collections from several sources as gifts, however, for lack of maintenance of record the original source is not known. The project is an outcome of the survey completed under project EAP643 carried out by the Centre for Studies in Social Sciences, Calcutta and fully funded by the Endangered Archives Programme of the British Library. All materials stored in public institutions and private collections for several decades exposed to tropical heat dust and moisture and as a result almost 80 percent of materials digitised as part of the project are not in usable condition. 1343 Manuscript, 371 printed books and 135 bound volumes of periodical, 510 images.