Digital Collections
We in Banwarilal Bhalotia College Library contain and preserve rich digital collections and materials from past and promote digital humanities scholarship.
The Digital Preservation Centre of our college aspires to engage and inform learners and turn them into scholar researchers. It provides a fascinating and impressive description of "history" - informative, artistic or reflexive. It endeavors not only to expand the field of knowledge, writing skills and technical skills but also to develop reflection, language, higher level thinking, social and artistic skills etc. with interdisciplinary practice. It aims to become a full-fledged Digital Archive in its own right.
The sculptures and following manuscripts were consulted and digital copies were reproduced by Sri Rajarshi Das, Librarian, B.B. College by visiting places of cultural importance in and around Asansol city.
Following are the digital ‘Surrogate’ collections that we presently have with us.
1. Pamphlets of Asansol Book Fair from the year 1982
2. Chaitanya Ganoddipika
3. Draupadir Bastraharan-Ballad
4. Kartikeya Brata Katha
5. Krishnajanmastami Bratakatha
6. Mahabharat Birat Parva
7. Mahabharat Santi Parva
8. Ramayan
9. Sculptures of Medieval Period of ‘Rarh Bangla’ area of West Bengal
“Private Records of Some Leading Business Families of Early Colonial Bengal” Supported by Endangered Archives Programme British Library, UK
The sudden disappearance of the Bengali entrepreneur families from the economic scene of Bengal is a curious and one of the least explored areas of the colonial history of India. The team led by Dr. Tridib Santapa Kundu, Associate Professor, B.B. College, Asansol endeavored to shed light on this phenomenon by digitally archiving private papers of eleven such erstwhile business families of Bengal. It is exciting to know that this project has achieved a great feat by exploring the interior quarters of those families literally by digitizing the rare family photographs of late 19th and early 20th century. The other private papers that were digitized during the course essentially captured interiority and intricacies of the key personalities of the families of that era. With the timely completion of the first phase of this project that was kindly supported by the Endangered Archives Programme of the British Library (U.K), a digital archive entitled “Private records of some leading business families of early colonial Bengal” saw the light of the day.
During the course of the project 164 rare books published between 1799 and 1942 were digitized. Its noteworthy that the project members consulted some very old pattas , land records, book of accounts, deeds, wills and suchlike. The team is proudly incorporated in the digital archive the handwritten history of a family of Upendrakishore Ray (Chowdhury) entitled Amader Bamsher Parichay, five volume handwritten history of the family of Motilal Seal, two handwritten documents from the family archive of the Roys of Cossimbazar Rajbari : for one is culinary book entitled Pakpranali and for another is a manual of Durgapuja, Sharadiya Durga Pujar Niyan Paddhati., the building plan of the house of Biswanath Motilal along with his portrait, two photographs of their family deity and some legal documents, The building plan of the house of the Duttas of Hatkhola, pricelist of the medicines and chemicals produced and imported by the Butto Kristo Pal and sons and some Almanacs published by them among other things..
The archive will be accessible to the researchers and whoever is interested through the websites of the British Library (U.K) and the Centre for Studies in Social Sciences, Kolkata as well as from the Digital Preservation Centre of Banwarilal Bhalotia College, Asansol for offline consultation very soon. The report of the Pilot Project (EAP 906) and the metadata of the digitized collections created by the Major Project (EAP1104) are provided for the convenience of offline access. The aim of this ever growing project is to develop consciousness of the citizen so far as the record keeping and preservation of cultural heritage is concerned.