Working on rare and fragile 19th Century Bengali books at SOAS
Priyanka Basu has identified about 30 Bengali texts from the 19th century, at our off site Egham repository. These will be looked at closely for metadata enhancement, to assess whether they should be added to our fragile or rare classmark sequence in SOAS Library, (closed access) or are duplicated on our online card catalogue. They are regarded as priority works due to the nature of their subject, their physical status and age.
This allows us to enhance the richness of our older material and make the collection more visible on our library catalogue.
Can one have access to biographies of 19th c in SOAS Bengali print collection? I have worked on the rare literature of this period for my thesis submitted to SOAS, I would be interested to know how the status and importance of the historical material is being judged for its conservation, other than the physical fragile conditions.
Hi Sanjukta,
Thank you for your interesting comment. You can search Bengali print books on SOAS library catalogue: filter by language (Bengali) and year of publication (1800-1899). Most of them are located in the Archives.
All the best,
Galia