Make the Ageless Wisdom of Tibet Available to All

These last three months, as we head into winter, have been very busy and productive here at Study Buddhism. And now, as we approach the end of the year, we are also celebrating something very special: the 20th anniversary of our online presence. 

Back on December 1^st, 2001, we pressed launch on the Berzin Archives website with a handful of articles. Two decades later, making use of the thousands of transcripts collected by Dr. Berzin during his 29 years in India, along with plenty of newly written material, the website now boasts over 12,300 articles. And these articles are not just in English, but in 31 other languages as well. 

Rebranded in 2015 as studybuddhism.com, the website’s content is now available to billions of people in their mother tongue. Of particular importance is that the website is available to all the traditionally Buddhist regions of Asia in their own languages, and also in seven Islamic languages. This pioneering work to make information available in these seven languages is especially relevant today, as interreligious dialogue and harmony is needed more than ever.

And our work goes on! We have been working hard to expand our presence on social media, to ensure that the content we create has as wide a reach as possible. Starting on October 1st, we have been posting several times a week, across all of the major platforms: Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and TikTok, creating personalized content suitable to each of these platforms. In general, we have posted one video, one article, and one or two quotes collected from our video interviews, every week. This has seen our followers and subscribers across all platforms increase substantially, while reach and engagement is up several hundred percent also.

Here are some of our accomplishments over these last three months:

•  Addition of 30 new English articles and translations from Tibetan primary sources
• Preparation and publication of 383 translations from English into our various other languages
• Copyediting of 65 English transcripts and files
• Work begun on adding new illustrations to many of our articles
• Work begun on expanding the addition of descriptions to all the articles, and abstracts for the multipart ones, in our Advanced Studies sections – 107 are already complete and online 
• Editing of 3 videos filmed with Tsenzhab Serkong Rinpoche II: Who is the Buddha?; What is the Dharma?; and What is the Sangha?
• Subtitling and addition to the Study Buddhism YouTube channel of the above-mentioned clips with Tsenzhab Serkong Rinpoche II
• The preparation of the said videos with Tsenzhab Serkong Rinpoche II into different formats for posting on Facebook (with subtitles), Twitter (with embedded English subtitles), and Instagram and TikTok (9:16 format with embedded English subtitles).
• Preparation of and uploading to social media channels, of 14 different video clips. Each video was prepared for posting on Facebook with 32 language subtitles, on Twitter with embedded English subtitles and a maximum length of 2 minutes and 20 seconds, on Instagram at 9:16 format with embedded English subtitles, and on TikTok at 9:16 format with embedded English subtitles and a maximum length of 3 minutes.
• Preparation of 14 quotes taken from our video interviews, accompanied with graphics, and the uploading of these to social media channels (Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter).
• Optimization of YouTube videos and images embedded on the website for lighter and speedier loading 
• Enabling the showing on mobile devices of tables of content of articles
• Updating of English and German donation forms
• Addition of banners announcing the 20^th anniversary of our website’s online presence
• Addition of further formatting styles in our content management system 
• Translation and addition of tags for all non-English articles  
• Optimization of tag features in our content management system

All of this hard work is made possible by your continuing generous support. Together, we shall “Make the Ageless Wisdom of Tibet Available to All.”

Links:

• Study Buddhism website of the Berzin Archives
• Study Buddhism on Facebook
• Study Buddhism on YouTube