Karnataka is advancing its vision to become a national leader in digital heritage preservation with a proposal to create a unified Karnataka Digital Heritage Portal that will integrate manuscripts, rare printed works, archival records and other cultural resources on a single platform.
The initiative, led jointly by the Oriental Research Institute (ORI), Mysuru, and the Karnataka State Archives, aligns with the Union government’s Digital India Mission and the National Mission for Manuscripts. Officials said the portal will provide global access to the State’s cultural heritage and strengthen long-term conservation and research.
As a key component of the plan, ORI Mysuru is set to house the National Centre for the History of Indian Sciences, further strengthening its role as a premier knowledge repository. The Institute has already embarked on an ambitious programme to digitise its entire collection of palm leaf and paper manuscripts, while also establishing a dedicated website to make rare resources accessible to scholars worldwide.
To accelerate digitisation, ORI has entered into an MoU with the Mahabharata Pratishthana, Bengaluru, and is also partnering with the Indira Gandhi National Centre for the Arts (IGNCA), New Delhi. The Institute is upgrading its technology infrastructure to support AI-enabled tools for script recognition, metadata tagging, and digital restoration of damaged materials - an area where initial experiments have shown promising results, officials pointed out.
