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The THL Tibetan and Himalayan Community Portal

This portal offers open services to promote communication and coordination in the field of Tibetan and Himalayan Studies, in community services initiatives, and in Tibetan communities themselves. It is open to anyone; participation is in no way limited to participation in other areas of THL. The Portal aims to articulate, support, and integrate the multiple communities of agents involved with the creation, production, dissemination, and use of knowledge of any type about Tibet and the Himalayas. Our focus is on agents involved with knowledge - creating new knowledge, disseminating knowledge, using knowledge to benefit local communities - whether that knowledge is about Tibet and the Himalayans, is created by Tibetan and Himalayan people, or is intended for the use of Tibetan and Himalayan communities. Thus we especially invite individuals and organizations involved with such knowledge to participate. However, the Community Portal is also concerned with knowledge about Tibetan communities and any activities and organizations working therein. Thus the Community Portal's scope is universal in that sense - any information on Tibetan communities and those working therein is knowledge that we are theoretically concerned to record and make available.

A library is centrally about people, collections, and tools, which together constitute a knowledge community bound together by a common concern for knowledge as it pertains to specific subjects and communities. We are beset by the multiple fragmentations which currently govern both the diverse types of agents of knowledge (fieldworkers, media specialists, technicians, scholars, editors, publishers, distributors, librarians, readers, and others) and the diverse types of domains of knowledge (disciplinary, cultural, linguistic, national, specialized, popular, and others). This fragmentation damages the quality and type of knowledge produced in contemporary times, as well as renders the creators and distributors of knowledge unresponsive to the multiple communities to which they are morally and practically obligated. New Web technologies enable us to uniquely meet these challenges in order to simultaneously enhance knowledge and community, thereby maintaining intellectual and moral. An intelligent and sustained use of these technologies allows us to usher in a new era of knowledge that is profoundly interdisciplinary and collaborative in character, as well as providing unprecedented access.

We are actively seeking participants in the Portal. Please note that participation does not entail working with THL or using THL for anything else. The Tibetan and Himalayan Community Portal is a service published by THL, but its content and participants should represent the full spectrum of people, organizations, projects, and resources relating to Tibet and the Himalayans, of which THL is just one small component. We aim to promote communication, mutual support networks, and long term-integration between distinct projects and organizations of diverse types and national bases. We are committed to the deep interrelation of knowledge and community at all levels, and in particular to the balance between the international and the local in knowledge, community, and their integration. Given that our chosen field of endeavor is a particular region of the world, we are also particularly concerned to help empower residents of that region as agents of knowledge in the fullest sense both in the creation and utilization of knowledge.

The Portal's core initiatives - which are currently not yet published - involve the establishment of a directory of individuals, organizations, and projects that will promote awareness of who is doing what, and help facilitate social networking and collaboration amongst them. In addition, we are working at a system that will enable community services projects to post reports on their activity, as well as share resources and models for their work. As we work on this, the Community Portal just offers simple indexes to various Web based communication opportunities for Tibet and the Himalayas - blogs, mailing lists, discussion forums, and worksites.

Provided for unrestricted use by the Tibetan and Himalayan Library