For Immediate Release

November 1, 2023

New database drives impact, access, and preservation with more than 350,000 South Asian documents.

Today Coherent Digital announced the launch of its most recent project, South Asia Commons: History and Culture.

Serving scholars and students seeking to explore South Asia's rich and diverse history and culture, the company has created an index and repository of books, historical journals, video, audio, newspapers, magazines, letters, diaries, and other primary-source materials produced in the region dating from 300 BC to present.

The database provides in-depth, advanced searching, with centralized access to over 500 organizations, 350,000 documents, and millions of pages scattered across the internet. With permission, copies are maintained; if an item disappears, a backup copy is available. Free access is provided to all institutions in Afghanistan, Bhutan, Nepal, Maldives, and Sri Lanka. Coherent will allocate ten percent of the money from sales of the project for new digitization projects in South Asian institutions.

The database will continue to grow, with guidance from a distinguished scholarly and professional advisory board and collaborative input from the user community. Its versatility ensures that programs in South Asian studies, media and liberal studies, as well as interdisciplinary programs in politics, gender, culture, anthropology, sociology, and global studies will benefit from its strength.

“One in four people comes from South Asia, yet many Western libraries have very little South Asian content. Like its sister project, Africa Commons, this database will provide much needed access to content from the Global South. I’d like to extend particular thanks to our advisory board for their help in building it,” said Stephen Rhind-Tutt, President of Coherent Digital.

Elizabeth Robey, editor at Coherent Digital said, “The success of History and Culture hinges on collaboration. Researchers, institutions, and students are encouraged to reach out to me to suggest websites and organizations for inclusion, collections that need digitization, or materials available for licensing. We greatly appreciate your ideas.”

South Asia Commons: History and Culture is part of a growing portfolio of South Asian resources from Coherent Digital on its South Asia Commons platform, including South Asia Archive, a landmark collection of 4.5 million pages of documents from across the Indian subcontinent from 1700 to 1953, originally collected by the South Asian Research Foundation (SARF).

South Asia Commons: History and Culture is available for subscription or purchase of perpetual rights.

For inquiries, trials, or quotes, please contact Elizabeth Robey.

About Coherent Digital LLC
Coherent Digital’s mission is to curate, save, enrich, preserve, and make information discoverable and useful. It publishes more than thirty databases on the following platforms: Africa Commons, History Commons, South Asia Commons, Mindscape Commons, and Canada Commons.