Abstract:

Web technologies are increasingly used within educational and research projects, especially those that involve broad international collaboration, in order to disseminate relevant knowledge and information. Furthermore, digital media are making less familiar subjects more appealing in nature to a wider pool of users. The International Dunhuang project was initiated in 1994 in order to offer data and images of manuscripts and artefacts collected in Dunhuang and the Eastern Silk Road area. This project has, among other things, resulted in multilingual website and database that provides a vast number of information on British, Chinese, French, German, Japanese, Russian, Korean, Swedish, Danish, Finnish and many other explorations of the archeological sites that are situated along the Silk Road and their corresponding collections.

The International Dunhuang project has enabled cooperation of some of the world’s most prominent educational and conservation institutions involved in the preservation, cataloging, educational activities and research conducted in the field of the Silk Road Studies. These include the British Library in London, which is also the project’s Directorate, the National Library of China in Beijing, the Ryukoku University in Kyoto, the Institute for Oriental Manuscripts in St Petersburg, the Dunhuang Academy, the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Science and Humanities, the National Library of France and Guimet Museum in Paris, the Research Institute of Korean Studies in Seoul, the Library of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences in Budapest, the British Museum and the Victoria & Albert Museum in London, as well as the Museum for Asian Art in Berlin. The paper aims at presenting the International Dunhuang Project: The Silk Road Online as the one that offers a state-of-the-art example of using Web Technologies for disseminating relevant knowledge and information.

Keywords:

The International Dunhuang Project, Web Technologies, dissemination, knowledge, Silk Road Studies.