E-Pustakalaya is a digital library produced by OLE (Open Learning Exchange) Nepal.  The bilingual (English and Nepali) library is categorized into the following seven areas: literature, are, course related materials, reference materials, other educational materials, teaching support materials, and newspaper and magazines.  Most of the downloadable material is in English and in .pdf format.  Although all the material in English is useful for students of ETEC521, that material in the teaching support section are more relevant to this class.  As subcategories, there are journals, articles on educational theory, professional development, etc.

There is also a highlights section offering further resources such as maps, videos, a Nepali dictionaly, etc.  At the bottom of the home page, they have included the logos of their contributing partners which are actually links to the corresponding organization’s website.

“Nepal Journals OnLine (NepJOL) is a service to provide access to Nepalese published research, and increase worldwide knowledge of indigenous scholarship.” There are 42 academic journals with 139 tables of contents listing 1960 articles of which 1319 are in full text. Unlike the journal selection offered by Digital Himilaya, these journals are all in English. There is also a journal content search option allowing searches by; all, authors, title, abstract, index terms, full text, date, supplementary files, etc.

Of course all the information accessible from NepJOL is specific to Nepal and might not be very useful for research of other areas or Indigenous groups.

The Digital Himalaya website is a project by the University of Cambridge “to develop digital collection, storage and distribution strategies for multimedia anthropological information from the Himalayan region.”

The information offered on the site is essentially divided into two areas: Collections and About the Project. In the Collections is a wealth of information including the Census of Nepal, Films, Journals, Maps, Music, etc. There are links to over 30 different academic journals (of which most are written in English)!

The most useful resource under the About the Project are the links which are divided into three sections: Anthropology, Himalayan/Tibetan/Central Asian Areas Studies, and Digitisation of Cultural Resources. This last area is not regionally specific to the Himalaya and would be of considerable interest in the context of this course.

Open Learning Exchange Nepal

Open Learning Exchange (OLE) Nepal is a Nepali non-governmental organization dedicated to assisting the Government of Nepal in meeting its Education for All goals by developing freely accessible, open-source Information and Communication Technology (ICT)-based educational teaching-learning materials.

This is directly taken from the “Who We Are” page on their website that also explains their mission and organization.  They also have a “How We Are Doing” page with a workflow chart to graphically describe the process they use to develop teaching materials.  Objectives and goals along with a prospective timeline are outlined on their “What We Are Doing”.  Finally and possibly most useful to my research is the page on “Why Open Learning” where they justify the use of ICT and open source educational materials.

They have recently launched a digital library and include a link on their homepage.  This is also a great resource as it contains: literature, art, course related materials, reference materials, other educational materials, teaching support materials, newspaper and magazines, maps, videos, etc.  Be sure to click on the British flag in the upper right corner if you can’t read Nepali.

http://www.nfdin.gov.np/

This web site is the online presence for a Nepalese governmental organization. “The main objective of the NFDIN, is to ensure the overall welfare of the 59 enlisted indigenous nationalities who live across the country.”

The information available on the site is limited and of course specific to indigenous Nepalese nationalities.  There are several interesting articles about the current state of affairs in Nepal and some of the social injustices and human rights violations that are happening.  It is interesting to learn how the Nepalese government is doing and plans to do to help her indigenous populations.  Unfortunately some of the articles are in Nepali, and I have yet to learn that language.  It is possible to subscribe to their newsletter by sending them an email.  Hopefully (for me) it is in English.