Projects

 

 

If you’ve ever wondered what goes on at the Shambhala Archives nowadays you’ve come to the right place. Below we’ve outlined our Current, Ongoing, Future and Recently Completed projects for you all to explore. Here you’ll be able to keep up to date on what the most recent projects going on at Shambhala Archives.

 

Current Project Highlight

We are doing a complete inventory of the Ladrang Vault containing all of the sacred objects of Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche. This will include an update of any condition or location changes of the items.

While every object is not on display, each object needs to be accountable, locatable and retrievable. This is where taking inventory becomes imperative.

An inventory is a list of objects that museums have brought into their collections, either permanently or temporarily. An accurate inventory of the collections serves as the foundation for everything a museum does such as programing, exhibits (online and in-person), research and publishing and conservation

Update August 2022: Thank you to everyone who contributed to the project and helped us achieve our fundraising goal, we greatly appreciate your generosity and kindness.
Even though we reached our goal are no longer fundraising for the Ladrang project, please feel free to donate to the Shambhala Archives as a whole. Contributions greatly help support our daily conservation work.

Current and Ongoing Projects

Inventory of the Ladrang Vault
We are doing a complete inventory of the Ladrang Vault containing all of the sacred objects of Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche. This will include an update of any condition or location changes of the items.
While every object is not on display, each object needs to be accountable, locatable and retrievable. This is where taking inventory becomes imperative.
An inventory is a list of objects that museums have brought into their collections, either permanently or temporarily. An accurate inventory of the collections serves as the foundation for everything a museum does such as programing, exhibits (online and in-person), research and publishing and conservation
Rehousing Artifacts within the Ladrang Vault
Along with doing an inventory of our Relics Vault, we are replacing any archival wrappings that show any signs of damage. In addition, we are rehousing and rearranging artifacts to ensure that this archival collection is maintained in the best possible condition.
Archives Media Vault Inventory
We are currently working on doing a complete inventory of all the analog media (such as cassette tapes, VHS, Reel to Reels etc) currently held within the Archives temperature controlled Vault. This will allow us to re-organize and get a better idea of what analog material still needs to be digitized or preserved so that we don’t lose any valuable material to the passage of time.
Updating the Website

Starting in Autumn of 2021, we began updating our website. We are adding more information and more visuals to better convey what we do at the Shambhala Archives. In the future we’re hoping the website will keep everyone up to date with projects and news relating to the Archives.

Media Database Management

We use a database software called FileMaker to keep track of our digital and analog media. This database is always being worked on, be it entering new digitized media entries, or organizing existing records. This gives us a better understanding of what still needs to be digitized, in addition to keeping track of the physical media that resides in our collection.

Future Projects

Scanning and Digitizing Photos

This is an ongoing project to digitize the thousands of photos held at the Shambhala Archives. This extensive collection beautifully captures the long history of Shambhala Buddhism throughout the years, including photos of many prominent teachers, events and talks.

Creating and uploading Backups

We are constantly creating backups of the digitized material to make sure that we never lose any valuable material from corrupted drives or unforeseen technical issues. In 2019 we started to ramp up the digital media upload process onto a cloud based drive and as of December 2021 we have backed up and uploaded over 20 Terabytes (20,000 Gigabytes) of material, making up about 75% of our digitized material. We plan to continue the upload process as we digitize more material to hopefully have a complete cloud backup of all our digitized media.

Path of Restoration

This is an ongoing project that encompasses the conservation and digitization of all physical media and artifacts held at the Shambhala Archives.
Below are amazing videos edited by Ethan Neville that perfectly explain the process of restoration.
Link 

Recently Completed Projects

Sakyong Mipham Rinpoche Video Project

This massive project to digitize all of the videos of Sakyong Mipham Rinpoche has been funded by individuals for a couple years, it became the main project for the new Technical Director in August of 2020 and was completed in August of 2021. This project included digitizing roughly 480 S-VHS tapes and took a total of roughly 705 hours.

Kalapa Lodge Digitizing Project

This project was accomplished by Archival Assistant Torin Vigerstad who located and cross referenced cassette tapes of talks and seminars held at Kalapa Lodge meetings

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