Theos-Talk Archives (August 2011 Message tt00071)

In the recent Krishnamurti Foundation Focus Newsletter, there is an update
on the archives project in progress. It states:

Many of you have donated generously to support the digitization of
Krishnamurtiâs archives. The goal of the Krishnamurti digital project is to
transfer all of Krishnamurtiâs original work - audio, video and text
material to digital form, thereby both preserving it and facilitating
distribution. Creating digital archives also allows easy transference to
future archival formats that will help preserve Kâs original works.

The Foundations have worked together and completed a large portion of this
work. With the help of a generous donation by Mr. Vishwanath from India, we
recently finished digitizing the majority of Krishnamurtiâs original video
recordings using uncompressed files stored on LTO-4 digital tapes. Each tape
holds 800 gigabytes of data, and the complete digital video archival
collection required 100 LTO tapes to hold the 550 video events. About 15
original films remain, requiring a more expensive digital transfer process.

Archivist Wendy Smith has completed digitization of the 434 audios remaining
in the collection of 2500 programs. All audio files are remastered to
produce cleaned-up WAV and mp3. These will become available to the public
through www.jkrishnamurti.org and on disks. The newly produced audio CDs and
video DVDs will also be sent to the various study centers of the
Krishnamurti Foundations.

The archives database is shared by KFA and KFT, continually updated by an
international team. We are happy to continue this work for the benefit of
all.

MKR Comments:

We should congratulate those involved in the project and those who supported
it financially and otherwise. They are showing how important is archiving
for the benefit of those interested in Krishnamurtiâs philosophy and also
how it is very important for long term preservation. The material that has
been archived is priceless.

I hope TS in Adyar and everywhere pays some attention to the need to
digitize and preserve archives. I am sure there are a lot of very valuable
original material dating back to Blavatsky days are around and they need to
be preserved. Now technology is available to do it efficiently and quickly.

There is an opinion among theosophical members that any archival material
sent to the organization almost ends up being like in a deep black hole and
not seeing light of the day.

Recent years, we have seen infighting among the leaders about the
International Rules and how changes need to be made, including the attempt
to disenfranchise members world-wide. Preservation and making available
archival material should be top priority. If Krishnamurti Foundation can do
it with no successor to Krishnamurti leading the organization, I am sure TS
in Adyar and the individual Sections can do it, if only the importance and
the urgency is recognized. I hope to see some action in this arena.

MKR


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