Magetan, DREAMSEA – DREAMSEA’s 11th mission was to Magetan, a city in East Java, Indonesia. Magetan is also called ‘City at the foot of the Mountain’ because it is located at the foot of Mount Lawu. There is an old mosque in Magetan which was built by one of Pangeran Diponegoro’s guards who had fled after the end of the Java War in 1830. It is easy to see that the mosque was made by an ex-soldier of the Java War because of the Sawo Kecik tree in front of the mosque. “This mosque was built around 1840 by one of […]

Sijunjung, DREAMSEA – During one month, from 22 March – 19 April 2019, eight members of the West Sumatra branch of the Nusantara Manuscript Association (Manassa) described and digitised manuscripts from the collection of Surau Simaung in Sijunjung, West Sumatra, Indonesia. They come from Andalas University, State Imam Bonjol Islamic University, and State Islamic Institute Batusangkar. Surau Simaung is a traditional Islamic educational institution located in Jorong Tapian Diaro Nagari, in Sijunjung Regency, Province of West Sumatra. Up to now, thousands of people have made the journey to the surauto visit the grave of its founder. In the surau, 88 […]

Digitisation is the best way to protect the contents of manuscripts. Through DREAMSEA, digitised manuscripts can be accessed for general, non-commercial, purposes. The manuscript owners are compensated, among others, by giving them disks with the digitised versions of their manuscripts. After they have been digitised, the manuscripts are returned to their owners to be stored by them. Another form of compensation is that efforts are made to preserve their manuscripts also in a physical way and to do this, DREAMSEA cooperates with the National Library of the Republic of Indonesia to make special boxes for the manuscript owners to store […]

  Manuscripts diversity found in the house of Go Lan Ing in Makassar Makassar, DREAMSEA – “Digitising Manuscripts – Safeguarding Cultural Diversity” is DREAMSEA’s tagline for the main goal of our mission in Southeast Asia. In order to reach our goal we continue our mission in East Indonesia by preserving religious manuscripts. We expect to digitise more than 5000 manuscript pages. “Society is very enthusiast. We do not only offer to digitise manuscripts but also ways to store manuscripts better so that they are safe and will not become damaged. From our initial assessment we thought that we would digitise […]

Banyuwangi, DREAMSEA – Monday night (18/3). Ten people dressed in black shirts and batik wrap aroundswearing a head cloth (udheng) gathered in the building of the Osing adat community in Banyuwangi, East Java, Indonesia. They were around 60 to 70 years of age but also Ilham and Mala were among them who are  students of the PGRI university in Banyuwangi who were only 18 and 25 years old. They are all members of the Mocoan Reboan and Mocoan Lontar Yusuf Milenial manuscript reading communities. The members of these communities had come together to welcome DREAMSEA who had come to Banyuwangi […]

DREAMSEA, Luang Prabang – The mission to preserve and document endangered and affected collections of Southeast Asian manuscripts is continued on the Mainland. From January to May 2019 DREAMSEA will digitise a large number of manuscripts from the Buddhist monastery of Vat Maha That Rasabovoravihan in the ancient Lao capital Luang Prabang, a UNESCO world heritage site since 1995. This recent mission in the Lao People’s Democratic Republic is carried out under the leadership of Dr. Khamvone Boulyaphonh, who has been the Director of the Buddhist Archives of Luang Prabang since September 2018. In its second phase, the mission will […]

Malang, DREAMSEA – “After the manuscripts have been digitised, I intend to set up a transliteration and translation program”, said Lulut Edi Santoso, the owner of dozens of manuscripts in Javanese in Malang, East Java, Indonesia. Mr Lulut made this statement when he welcome the digitisation team on 24 February, 2019. The digitisation team is led by Dr. M. Adib Misbachul Islam from the Nusantara Manuscript Society (Manassa). The team has just arrived at Lulut Edi Santoso’s place in Karangploso district, Malang, to assist him with preserving the manuscripts he has owned for some years now. Some of his manuscripts […]

Denpasar, DREAMSEA – In 2019, our mission to preserve manuscripts in Southeast Asia started in Denpasar, Bali, Indonesia. The mission took place from 10-15 January 2019 and aimed to preserve the palm-leaf manuscript collection of I Made Kajeng Waras Himawan Suweca by conserving and digitising them. The mission was executed by DREAMSEA in cooperation with the Indonesian Association of Nusantara Manuscripts (Manassa), the National Library of the Republic of Indonesia and the Aliance for the Care of the Balinese Language (APBB). The team was chaired by Aditia Gunawan, a Manassa activist who works at the National Library, together with I […]

Pekanbaru, DREAMSEA – “Masyarakat Pernaskahan Nusantara (Manassa) is a strategic partner for DREAMSEA in executing missions to preserve manuscripts in Southeast Asia, especially in Indonesia”, said Prof. Dr. Oman Fathurahman on 27 November 2018 in Pekanbaru, Indonesia. The DREAMSEA Principal Investigator made this statement in his “Presentation to introduce the DREAMSEA Programme and Welcome Manassa Members” as one of the activities during the “Simposium Internasional Pernaskahan Nusantara ke-17” (17th International Symposium on Nusantara Manuscripts). The symposium was organised by Manassa from 26 to 28 November 2018 and was supported by DREAMSEA and a number of other partners. Manassa was founded […]

Pekanbaru, DREAMSEA – DREAMSEA Principal Investigator, Prof. Dr. Oman Fathurahman said that even though DREAMSEA focusses on manuscript preservation through digitisation, it also pushes for the study of the values of diversity contained in Southeast Asian manuscripts. That is the reason DREAMSEA fully supports the “Simposium Internasional Pernaskahan Internasional ke-17” (17th International Symposium on Nusantara Manuscripts) organised by the Masyarakat Pernaskahan Nusantara (Manassa) in Pekanbaru, Indonesia, which was held from 26 to 28 November 2018. “Apart from assisting manuscript owners in their efforts to take care of their manuscript collections, one of the outputs of the programme is to offer […]