Library

Our Library

The Bhaktivedanta Research Center (BRC) Kolkata has a rich physical collection of over seventeen thousand books, four thousand journals and seventy manuscripts covering diverse topics of humanities such as history, philosophy and culture of Bengal. Additionally, scholars are provided access to over three thousand latest editions of international publications in the digital format, covering a wide range of topics such as encyclopedias, history, philosophy, sociology and culture. The BRC remains committed to fostering rigorous pedagogy, research, reading, and writing in the field of humanities and social sciences. The library is open six days a week between 10 am – 5 pm.

Collection

BRC Kolkata’s proactive initiatives have helped conduct over fifty manuscript missions across the Indian subcontinent. Owing to its dedicated infrastructure for preserving fragile materials, the BRC Kolkata has received numerous manuscripts as donations. It now has over a thousand manuscripts preserved digitally and around seventy physical manuscripts. This treasure trove of manuscripts has content on a wide-range of subjects including Sahitya, Vyakarana, Vedanta, Vaidya, Agama, Tantra, Nyaya and Mantra Sastra. Most of the manuscripts are in Sanskrit language and the scripts are chiefly in Bengali and Oriya. Some of the texts in the manuscripts are also accompanied by commentaries. A sizable percentage of manuscripts are classified as rare. BRC Kolkata has a temperature-controlled room, fumigation chamber and a fire-proof cabinet to preserve them safely. Some of the fragile manuscripts have also been preserved on zinc-plates. 

The key aims of the manuscripts mission program at BRC are:

– Surveying and collecting manuscripts

– Conserving manuscripts in their original form

– Digitizing manuscripts

– Conducting outreach programmes and awareness camps

A Collection of Manuscripts at BRC Kolkata

Digitization

Since its inception, BRC has been focused on digitally preserving its treasured collections and making them available to research scholars worldwide. With generous contributions from various patrons we acquired a state-of-the-art Bookeye 4 scanner in March 2011 which is kept in our Kolkata branch. Since then we have been regularly digitizing manuscripts, books and journals, especially those which are out of print today. We are also in the process of hosting them on public websites like archive.org for the benefit of all. BRC Kolkata also has a portable table scanner for quick scanning of materials. Till date more than nine hundred books and five thousand newspapers have been scanned.

Rare Items

BRC Kolkata has a priceless collection of several rare books as well as postcards, letters, hand-written diaries, notes, maps and paintings from the colonial period.