The Rare Book Society of India
This is a collection of articles archived for the excellence of their content. |
In brief
The Times of India, Aug 11 2015
Shrabonti Bagchi
With 50,000 members, the Rare Book Society of India is more than a digital library it's also a forum for discussion and debate Interest in Indian history is near universal, says Subbiah Yadalam, the founder of the Rare Book Society of India. Within minutes of his posting details about a new (old) book on the society's vibrant, 50,000-member community page on Facebook, there are views and `likes' from places flung as far apart as Uganda, the US and Slovenia, says Yadalam, who started the society's website and Facebook page to con and Facebook page to connect with bibliophiles especially those who share his passion for rare, out-ofprint books from all over the world. “There are viewers from 72 countries at any given time,“ says the 52-year-old founder, who is as passionate about the power of sharing and social media as he is about rare books; his goal to make these books accessible to everyone through digitization and free downloads.
The obsession with rare books started a decade ago when Yadalam came across a book, The Castes and Tribes of Southern In dia, a scholarly and encyclopaedic tome by Edgar Thurston and Kadambi Rangachari published in 1909, at his club library. He found it fascinating and wanted to buy it from the club, which refused to sell it. But Yadalam had tasted blood and started hunting down old, rare titles at bookstores, auctions and online, starting with bibliophile KK Murthy's Select, where serendipity a quality abundant in that most gloriously anarchic of bookstores played a huge role in helping him start his collection.
Today , while his personal collection of rare books on Indian history numbers around 175 titles, Yadalam also sources digitized versions from websites such as Gutenberg.org and Archive.org. The focus of his collection is books on Indian history, and he has created a digital library of hundreds of rare, out-of-copyright books on the subject, meticulously digitized to retain the look and feel of the original volume.
Not just that, they are curated and tagged by subject; so if you are looking for books under the subject, say, `Pallava Expansion', you would find posts on the website related to the topic along with URLs, using which you can download PDF versions of the books. There's also an option to read them online.
“Many of these books could be considered as history , opinion or plain propaganda, but the aim is to show that there is no wasteful source in the study of history, there is only an added perspective,“ says Yadalam. He's proud of the fact that what started off as a group for rare book collectors has been transformed into a forum for history buffs, scholars and “the silent curious.“
