Tenzin Sonam
Resident Professional
Tenzin Sonam was born in Kathmandu, Nepal. Following the 1959 Chinese occupation of Tibet, his parents fled Tibet and escaped into India through a northeastern passage and later moved to Nepal. Sonam received his education from the Tibetan Children’s Village School (TCV) in Dharamsala, India which was specifically set up for children in exile in order to preserve and promote Tibetan culture among the children. He attended Madras Christian College in Chennai, India and received a Bachelor’s degree in Economics and Master’s degree in English Literature. Sonam has also taken a diploma course in computer science. Sonam joined the Library of Tibetan Works & Archives in 2004 as the Assistant Publication Officer in the English Publications Department. The Publication Department predominantly publishes texts concerned with Buddhist philosophy, but it has also produced books relating to Tibetan archaeology, history, politics, medicine, language, folk culture and proverbs. This department is also responsible for maintaining Foreign Translation copyright for the books published by the Library of Tibetan Works & Archives. Due to his interest in IT, Sonam took the initiative of developing official website of the Library of Tibetan Works & Archives - http://www.ltwa.net - and is responsible for its maintenance. He has developed a number of databases for English Publication and was also responsible for the maintaining them. Sonam also acts as the photographer who is in charge of taking photographs for all of the official events of the Library of Tibetan Works & Archives. In April 2007, Sonam joined the Audio Visual section as an assistant editor. The Audio Visual Archive has more than 26,000 hours of audio-recordings containing personal accounts, interviews with elders, lamas and other religious figures, craftspeople, doctors, astrologers, story-tellers, traders and pilgrims, exservicemen, former government officials, etc. besides, recordings of teachings, discourses, lectures, etc. of His Holiness the Dalai Lama and other eminent lamas and scholars. At present the library is focused on archiving and preserving recordings, and has long term plans to edit, improve, and digitize them in order to make them available in various formats, including online. Sonam has also created a live streaming and downloadable version of the Library’s Buddhist philosophy class.
In short, Sonam’s work currently involves:
• Development and Maintaining Library’s website
• Maintaining Live Streaming of Buddhist Philosophy Class
• Audio & Video Editing
• Recording works – both Audio and Video
• Official Photographer of the Library
• Maintaining and preservation of Audio Visual Archive
