OdiaBibhaba.in: A Virtual Library Carrying Odia Literary Treasures

OdiaBibhaba.in, a virtual library with 10 lakh pages of reading materials including Odia newspapers, books, magazines, biographies, references, dictionaries and others. Many of the books and publications are published before 1950 have been digitized for the consumption of researchers, students and general public.

“We felt the urgent need of digitising these literary treasures as these printing materials are slowly decaying and it would be very difficult to revive them, once lost.

Odiabibhaba.in is a small initiative to preserve these old publications and also to take them to the public,” said Nikhil Mohan Pattnaik of Srujanika, a voluntary organisation working in the field of promotion and popularisation of science and digitisation of Odia publications.

It took around seven months to compile everything while the digitisation work has been going on for the last several years.

“Every week we digitised around 5000 pages. We have seven lakh pages ready for uploading and we will keep on updating it every day. People can download them free of cost,” said Puspashree Pattnaik, a member of Srujanika.

The website also gives introduction about the books uploaded so that readers can a get a brief idea on it before downloading. Besides, the files are in smaller sizes so that easily one can download and read them unlike other sources in the internet. The library has included odia encyclopaedias, bibliographies, biographies, natural resources, literature and linguistics.

“We have uploaded some treasures of Odia literature like Geeta Gobinda, Sidhhanta Darpana of Pathani Samanta, Purnachandra Odia Bhashakosha, and several classic novels and books. We have plans to upload the audio recitation of Geeta Gobinda in future,” said Pattanaik.

Courtesy: Times of India