We all know that the Digital Library of India addresses a Critical Need of the Masses – Online Books.

However, we are all aware that the Data Entry Team they employed was in direct rivalry to the Data Entry Guys who do your Indian Govt. Voter Id Cards and other similar Govt. Agencies who recruit directly from the Fields – of agricultural India.

This has created a very unsurmountable and unfortunate impediment in these books ever making it to the Lay Person – not least a constant irritating affair for Regular Users.

Just like Govt. of India’s passe Railway Enquiry Interface was given a very elegant and smooth makeover by the guys at http://erail.in, such an effort is possbile for DLI as well by a small group of Volunteers.

This is the Idea.

Step 1).

For each DLI Bar Code the Corresponding Library of Congress Unique Identifier is identified.

Thus – Our Customized and Improved Search Interface allows you to directly search for everything through the LoC Entries and then the result is fwd. to the DLI eBook Link.

This task can be easily done by the Netizens who regularly surf DLI.

Step 2). The above alone will tremendously remove the inconveniences. But a second step will furthur make the process even smoother. As we all know the Interface only presents you with an Image which we have to keep scrolling.

For each book searched and attempted for download through the New Interface:  do the following:

i.  Run a backend process that will download all the images once and only once

ii. pdf these images in the Server.

iii. shift this pdf with Correct Title and Author using the LOC Values into Google Drive using the very easy Google Drive API.

iv. Let this PDF be available as a Link to Google Drive .

v. Let User download this book by Add to My Drive and share it with click of buttons, no infinite cycles of upload-download

vi. This process happens only the first time. Next Time. Same Book is needed we present them with the Link which is maintained in out Internal Database.

Avision FB2280E Book Scanner from Taiwan

A lot of us are using various kinds of Book scanners and are at the mercy of hit and trial to get the optimal scanner.

And some of us dont have that luxury so they are stuck forever with unproductive and low quality and slow scanners.

We went through that route and started with a dedicated HP Scanner. This was slow and not optimal for Book Scanning.

Then we changed to Avision’s FB2080E that gave us the output of 300 pages/hour. This was faster than HP and best thing about it was that it had one portion of the scanning glass completely exposed with no border.

Hence thick books with adjacent pages almost merging in the middle of the book could be placed easily in the middle and stil capture everything without missing a purna-virama or a full-stop.

But Avision’s FB2080E was still slower.

Then we purcahsed Avision’s FB2280E ( twentty-two eighty as oppsed to twenty-eighty ) which gives us between 500 pages to 700 pages per hour depending upon the competence of the Operator.

It cost us around 23,000 Rs in Delhi.

The following will give more details.

http://www.avision.com.tw/motion.asp

This is the most satifying scanner we have ever used. and we will wholeheartedly recommend it to everyone.

Shri Tarun Dwivediji surviving son was very lind to let us access to the 50+ Works of his Father.

However, it is unfortunate that we were only able to scan only aroung 60-70% of his Works which were the only one in Tarun’s possession.

We will contact the Other Prominent Library in Varanasi where he has donated his books.

http://www.scribd.com/collections/4298536/Vraj-Vallabha-Dwivedi

The books above dont include the Other Works that have been scanned by other people and are available on Scribd.

This is a New Account in scribd where the best scans of Vintage Material will be uploaded.
http://www.scribd.com/vintageindicbooks

Highlight of the Collection is:

Raghuvansha Prose Translation 1878 by Well Know Hindi Author Raja Lakshman Singh with Baj Bhasha Metric Translation Hardayalu Singh

http://www.scribd.com/doc/198965763/Raghuvansha-Raja-Lakshman-Singh

This book has a Story.

This Book I had first purchased in 1997-98 from MRML, Nai Sarak ( now vacated ]

then got misplaced when I was coming back from America

And only later I realized what a colossal damage I had done to Scholarship in loosing a book with some of the Oldest and best samples of Early Sanskrit based Hindi Writing of the 19th Century but the Guardian Deities of Learning were on my side and I ran into it here in Singapore of all Place !!!! in the North Indian Hindu Association Library.

They were very kind to lend it to me and I have returned the book to them today

Here it is pls read it and download it

Directory with Phone Numbers and Address of Sanskrit Scholars in India and Abroad

http://www.sanskrit.nic.in/DigitalBook/I/Inventory%20of%20Sanskrit%20Scholars.pdf

A Comprehensive Listing of Every PhD in Sanskrit  in India

http://www.sanskrit.nic.in/Thesis_Modified/Thesis-E-H/Thesis%20Modified/mainpage/directory_of_doctoral_dissertati.htm

and Two Volumes of Sankrit Education Institutions

in India

http://www.sanskrit.nic.in/DigitalBook/S/sixty%20yearsvol1.pdf

and abroad

http://www.sanskrit.nic.in/DigitalBook/S/sixty%20yearsvol2.pdf

Numero Uno:

1. www.scribd.com  ( Huge Justice to Sanskrit, Hindi and Other Indian Langauges ) . Most User friendly and Comprehensive Book Sharing Site.

( One Minor caveat. trying to download a book, If you dont have a login account with huge amounts of uploads, Scribd will irk you for either membership fees or uploads in exchange. In that case just dump any random eText you have from a Washing Machine Manual to T V Tuner Guide and you can bypass.

2. Google Books ( http://books.google.com )

If you are not in USA ( and some other Countries )  this might not work. Strangely you will be shown the book with no way to either view it or download it.

http://bypassy.com/ to your Rescue. This will give you the View as any Viewer in US will  get and you will be able to download the Rare and out of Copyright Books.

Browse through bypassy and you will be able to see it as US Viewer will.

https://www.torproject.org is also helpful. Use there Tor Browser.

http://www.gbooksdownloader.com/ will help downloading the books without a browser.

3. www.4shared.com

( Caveat : if you dont have a paid account they will force you to wait for a few seconds. Workaround is to have a free account and use the Transfer to My Account Link and the book will be in your free account and you can now download it from anywhere where ever you can log in from

4. www.libgen.info (Mostly for English books but almost has 80% of the books I searched for. every major writer is there)

The Most Samaritan of all and most books and authors are there but not so great for Indology but Reserach in general.

5. archive.org. Very Useful for Sanskrit only books.

6. avaxsearch.com ( some irritations like useless links, popups and may be even viruses and generally less success rate.

7. DLI (http://www.dli.ernet.in/). I hate DLI. A very Historic Opportunity to assmble and catalog the Heritage of India – yet again was wasted thanks for giving business to the same ppl who were responsible for the CommonWealth Games , 2G and the Coal Mines Scandal. Is a living Testimonial to the advances of Literacy and Common Sense among the masses back home.

However, exemptable from the diatribe above is the Feedback Team who are – suprisingly prompt in restoring broken Links.

The following DLI Viewer is a nifty handy tool for viewing the books and downloading them – which the pre-80s UI of the DLI Website makes a massive pain.