A National Digital Archive is an urgent need of our country, if we are to preserve all our literature from the Ola leaves to printed books. Not only for the preservation, but for ready availability for readers and scholars.
There have been several projects for collection and digitising Ola leaf books, but how successful such projects have been is not known. One problem could have been because instead of one unified project there were several, which could result in duplication, overspending of funds and unwanted competition. However the preservation of Ola books in a digital library is essential and urgent, because many of them would be facing decay and destruction. It would be in the best interest of all to let researchers use the digital copies, the way Dead Sea Scrolls have been digitised.
Another urgent issue is the digitising of the Sigri Graffiti on the “mirror wall”. The book in two volumes published by Prof. Senarath Paranavithana in 1956 has been out of print for many years. The graffiti on the wall are fading away fast and it may be already too late to make digital copies, and Paranavithana’s book and the several Sinhala book on the graffiti need to be reprinted. Another rare book is the translation into English and Sinhala of the Janakiharana, the 6th century Sanskrit poem by king Kumaradasa.
Status quo
Coming back to the present, I wonder if there is a digital copy or even a printed copy in good condition, of the first ever Sinhala novel,”Wasanawantha saha Kalakanni Pavula”, by Lindamulage Isaac de Silva, published in 1888, or “Vimala” (1892) by Albert Silva or “Meena” (1905) by Simon Silva. There were other books that our young generation had never seen, the first English novel “Dice of the Gods” (1917) by Lucien de Zilva, “Tragedy of a Mystery:A Ceylon Story” (1928) by Rosalind Mendis or even “Grass for my Feet” (1935) by Jinadasa Vijayatunge.
Deshabandu Sirisumana Godage was making a great contribution for preserving our old books by reprinting many of them and also publishing collected works of our early writers. Among them are the complete works of Piyadasa Sirisena, which probably is out of print again, and out of circulation, as are the series of anthologies he published of the poetry of our Colombo era writers. He also began a project of reprinting some of the very early publications, because he wanted to preserve them. Probably he lost money in all such ventures, but he continued, a task that no one else was interested in.
I came across an admirable project, a non-profit book publisher, Black Eagle Books, to propagate India literature globally and who claim books published by then never go out of print.
It would be an interesting exercise for young students of literature to study the development of the Sinhala, Tamil and English novels, poetry and short stories over the past seven decades, perhaps enough topics for their postgraduate studies.
We face another unfortunate situation, where some Indian publishers have somehow obtained copyright for some of our ancient classics. They are either selling them at high profits or not publishing the books now. But they do not release the copyright for some books which had been written long before the copyright act came into force.
Dr. Kavan Ratnetunge has been struggling for the past 25 years to get our ancient books online for readers around the world. He began with uploading the Mahavamsa at lakdiva.org.lk. One or two publishers have started selling some of their publications as e-books, but what we need are books to be released free of charge, because it does not cost them anything.
Initial survey
For a start the National Library or the National Archives could begin a survey of all the books that had been published over the past two centuries, and how many of them are still available. We do not have to look very far. We could start with award winning books. The ministry of Cultural Affairs began the honouring of our writers in 1956. Since then every year the best books in many categories in all three languages were selected and awards presented. I am not aware of a complete list of such awards over the past 74 years which is available either at the Ministry or National archives. The other pathetic situation is that most of these books are out of print and some of the publishers may have shut down, and the authors may not be alive. We need to locate copies of these books and digitise them, if publishers are not interested in reprinting them.
It is not only the Ministry who is to be blamed. The Book Pubslishers association started awarding a Swarna Pusthaka Award in 2010, and they have given this award for 20 novels, including the 5 novels which were shortlisted in 2010. We have to inquire from the publishers if any of these books are available in print at present. There is also the Gratiaen Trust who began the awards in 1993 for the best work of English fiction and in 2003 the H. A. I Goonetilleke prize for the best translation.
Many of these awards went for manuscripts, some of which never got published and the published books are probably out of print now. Even the books published by Michael Ondaatje are not available for the Sri Lankan readers.
Going digital with all our writings will be our greatest service to our children, by making all information readily and freely available and also to Mother Earth, because we would not be using so much paper, which in turn means we do not have to murder million of trees everyday to manufacture paper.
Archive material should be accessible by all, from anywhere, anytime, and for free. No one should have the right to monopolize, control, deny access or make a profit from archived material.
Daya Dissanayake