Developing a Traditional Mongolian Script Digital Library

Abstract

This paper discusses our approaches to create a digital library on traditional Mongolian script. We introduce system architecture of a digital library that stores books and materials of historical importance written in traditional Mongolian which contain history of 1,000 years and are important part of Mongolian culture. Specifically, we discuss the issues of traditional Mongolian script encoding. There are several non-Unicode encoding developed, some of them are still commonly used these days. Furthermore, a diverse character encoding, code pages and keyboard drivers are precluding proper enrichment of Unicode based content. We analyzed existing non-Unicode encoding of traditional Mongolian script. Developing text conversion technique from diverse encoding to Unicode is becoming essential demand in order to adopt already made digital content in traditional Mongolian script easily. Without such a conversion technique, the traditional Mongolian script digital library encounters difficulties such as content enrichment by retyping and unable to utilize already developed dictionaries in non-Unicode encoding.