Other States - Orissa

A boon for researchers

BHUBANESWAR: The city-based three-year-old Oriental Academy of Arts and Letters has announced a unique free service to scholars, researchers and students of arts, culture and cinema.

A brain-child of writer-translator Narendra Narayan Das, who quit his lucrative job to set up a cultural centre in his home state of Orissa, OAAL, situated at AL-26, VSS Nagar here, has a rare collection of about 30,000 books besides a large collection of audio-visual materials on literature, culture, mythology, religion, philosophy, art, history, film studies and photography. The collection includes books on social and behavioural science, gender studies, folk and tribal studies, travel, biographies and autobiographies apart from a wide variety of dictionaries and encyclopaedias in English, Hindi, Bengali, Assamese and Oriya languages. “Some of the books are more than a 100 years old,” says Das, the founder director of OAAL, who has gifted his personal collection of 30 years to the institution .

A gallery of paintings and photographs is coming up.

“It was my dream to build an institution in my State where people would have access to the literature of the world and information on the world of art and culture. I also wish that this academy would highlight Orissa’s literature, heritage and culture ,” said Das .

With the click of a mouse on OAAL’s website -- www.orientalacademy.org -- one can have access to the catalogue of the rare collection besides the academy’s programmes and activities, said the director who is also an avid collector of antiques.

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