Except for the most committed, this process of mailing books back and
forth is a deterrant to the pursuit of such an interest. Instead, why
don't we think in terms of a real virtual library? The long term solution
to preserving our classics is to store them electronically. If, as
someone suggested, the copyrights on several important short story
anthologies have expired and anybody who can spend money on paper and
ink can publish them, why not make the telugu associations you refer
to invest their effort and money in scanning these books (or parts therof)
in and storing them with hyperlinks? That will kick-off an enterprise
like what is being discussed, and we need more ideas to sustain it
beyond just short stories, or out-dated literature (?)
I have noticed also that there have been few replies to Kamala's
original poser. Consider this: let us say we put together a "Primer on
Telugu
Literature" that would cater to interested beginners. It is easy to
conceive of a web page that has snippets from writings of several people
related to literature. For example, the vemana poems someone posted could
come under the heading of "vemana". Several of Dr. Vemuri's tutorial
writings on various topics could be listed as well; someone else could
volunteer to say, post wide-ranging collection of Potana's poems (with
meanings if possible); yet another could introduce the literary process
of avadhanam, and so on. This way, we would have a guided tour of telugu
literature that is sure to kindle the interest of several people. A
byproduct of this, as you can imagine, will be that parts of several
classic works will be available electronically for all. This will
further satisfy our quest for a virtual library.
We need an editor for this Telugu literature web page who has a keen sense
of judgement about the values of our literary heritage. Subject to his
availability and interest, it would be ideal to have Dr. Vemuri kick-off
this effort.
> V. Rao Vemuri
>
--sreenivas-- dsr@vnet.ibm.com