184 year-old Indian library goes digital, including 444 yr-old book on Alexander

As a history amateur, it is painful to force myself never to probe into south indian history [of which I've heard so much, growing up there] simply because I've learned by experience that it only leads to frustration and disappointment at the lack of information and research. This work is incredible.

The cynic in me wants to say, "Just wait until descendants of Alexander the Great sue you for copyright infringement."<p>I think this effort is great. I hope more and more history can be put on line and made accessible. I am a firm believer that knowing the past is the only way to know where you are going.

You can easily download the books from here: <a href="http://statelibrary.kerala.gov.in/rarebooks/site_media/" rel="nofollow">http://statelibrary.kerala.gov.in/rarebooks/site_media/</a>

Hailing from Kerala, really happy to see this happening. This is indeed a great achievement, and hope there will be more initiatives of such kind which will help to bring together the vast amount of information scattered around in the sub continent.

While I commend them for digitizing, I'm somewhat disappointed that they are just scanned copies instead of selectable/searchable text. I wish they made them more accessible for reference by truly converting them to text.

Does anyone know what archival format the library is using?

The city's name is Thiruvananthapuram not Trivandrum.

Glad to see it online, but a 444 year old book on Alexander the Great is still ~ 2,000 behind when he lived.

&#62;3,28,268 &#62;1,84,321<p>That's an odd way to represent a number.

I think the library and the books survived because the Kochi-Thiruvithankur area was never under foreign rule.