More than 13,000 ancient Tibetan books and classic texts have been surveyed, registered and preserved under a program launched in 2009 in all seven cities and prefectures of Southwest China's Tibet Autonomous Region, that will soon come to an end. 

The program was funded by the Chinese central government and the regional government of Tibet, as part of efforts to protect ancient texts that are written in Tibetan, an integral part of Chinese culture, local news website xzxw.com reported. 

Since the program was launched, more than 10 million yuan ($1.4 million) has been provided by the central and regional governments to support the work.

Cai Luo, deputy director with the ancient book department of the Tibet regional library, told the local media that the registration of Tibetan books was carried out at 1,200 of the 1,600 such sites in the seven cities and prefecture of Tibet.

So far, more than 13,000 pieces of ancient Tibetan texts have been registered at key ancient book protection sites including the Potala Palace and Norbulingka Park in Lhasa.

The registered Tibetan ancient texts also include those collected from remote villages and discovered in the remains of temples, the report said.

Local authorities have also been digitalizing the books in an effort to preserve their content, said Cai.

In recent years, the ancient books protection center of the Tibet Autonomous Region has restored hundreds of pages of ancient books, and taken thousands of pictures of the pages so they can be digitized and allow damaged pages found in local temples to be reconstructed.

Authorities also launched training programs in Tibet to teach local talent digitalizing and preservation techniques to help preserve the classical texts. 

Global Times