In order to further strengthen the protection of Tibetan ancient books and expand the cultivated talent team of the protection work, the opening ceremony of the Repairing Base for Tibetan Ancient Books and a training class of Tibetan ancient books repairing skill was held on July 21, 2015, in Lhasa the capital city of southwest China’s Tibet Autonomous Region (TAR).

Up to now, in TAR, there are 158 ancient Tibetan books listed into the National Rare Books Catalogue, 4 relevant working units listed into the national key collection units of ancient books, and 200 precious old books are purchased from Yushu and other [places of Qinghai Province.

Since the beginning of 2015, the national center for protection of ancient books has been continuing to combine existing resources and carrying out the micrographic reproduction and digitization jobs of Tibetan ancient books in accordance with the pre-set plan.

Nyema Tsering, vice director of the TAR Publicity Department and the head of TAR Cultural Department, has introduced that TAR has the largest collection of ancient books in Tibetan language. During recent years, a large number of damaged old books in need of being protected and repaired are found by the official protection center of the region, which calls for a large number of workers with protecting and repairing skills, therefore, the first training class of Tibetan ancient books repairing skill is decided to be held.

This training class will last for 10 days, some key units of ancient books collection like the Potala Palace, Jokhang Monastery, Ramoche Temple and the Archives Bureau have taken part in the training and 42 trainees from all 4 cities and 3 prefectures of the region are accepting the training and will take evaluation at the end of the 10 days, qualified trainees will be able to get relevant professional and technical certificate from official regional-level department of TAR.