 Our work in finding some modern technology/equipment for Mongolian equipment began when Mr. Batdorj Damdensuren, director of the Zanabazar Mongolian National Museum (see Project 1), asked us if we could find a grant for new computers for the Museum offices. At the time, the Museum only had old Pentium II machines that had been donated by a Korean organization many years earlier and were now long obsolete. The Museum also needed new printers and scanners; the old ones were either defective or long obsolete. Finally, it came to our attention that several of the individual workers would greatly benefit from digital cameras.
We applied to the Shelley and Donald Rubin Foundation for a grant of $5,000. The application was successful, and three new computer were acquired, together with printers, scanners and other equipment. We separately found money for a high-end computer for deputy curator Oyun Tegshee, for maintaining and updating the website we had built earlier for the Museum (see Project 2). Finally, we also found money for five digital cameras for individual artists associated with the Museum, for their personal projects.
Various private organizations and individuals also applied to us for assistance in this regard. Mongolian lamas of old were prolific writers, many penning as many as a thousand and more titles. Under Communism this creative impetus was stifled, but Mongolian independence from Communism saw a complete renaissance of the writing spirit in the country. In particular, having been cut off from the free world for over seventy years, there was a strong need for the translation of books from the international community, as well as the translation of Mongolian literature into foreign languages.
The unique history of the country – its forced isolation from the international community for seven decades, and then its emergence in the 1990s as a free nation – meant that it skipped almost three generations of technology (unless one calls poor Russian copies of Western equipment as modern technology). Thus Mongol writers went overnight from clunky ancient typewriters to modern computers. Printing companies went from hand-set type (“hot type”) to computer-designed offset printing. Therefore the need for modern writing equipment was very much felt throughout the country. This meant modern computers, printers and software.
Next we provided two laptop computers and a good quality digital camera to our dear friend Sansarbat at Munkhiin Useg, or “Eternal Literature,” for his writing and translating work. He completed three books with these before entering his three year retreat two years later.
Finally we raised funds for four computers, four digital cameras and a scanner for friends associated with the Golden Flower Translation Bureau. We feel that this translation bureau performs an especially important service in translating to and from Mongolian and a half dozen languages, including English, Korean, Chinese and Russian.
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