In a joint project between Stockholm University and the Museum of Ethnography, Stockholm, materials from two Central Asia collections once belonging to the Swedish scholars Sven Hedin and Gunnar Jarring will be digitised and documented for the establishment of a database compatible with the International Dunhuang Project, established in 1994 at British Library, London.



The aim of the project is to increase the accessibility of the collections for both the scientific community and the general public by providing possibilities to search the catalogues of the collections and offering accounts of their provenance and content in Swedish as well as English.



Through this cooperation between The Gunnar Jarring Library, established in 2007 at Stockholm University under the patronage of the Royal Swedish Academy of Letters History and Antiquities, and the Sven Hedin Foundation at the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences and the Museum of Ethnography, the academic study of Central Asia will be enriched with a unique Swedish scientific profile. The three-year digitisation project is the first major enterprise in Sweden in order to create a common national forum for the consultation of two Central Asia collections of considerable academic and public interest around the world. Other Swedish archives with digitised Central Asia materials (manuscripts, letters, photographs, maps, etc.) will be approached for contributions to the joint national database.