The International Dunhuang Project: The Silk Road Online
IDP is a ground-breaking international collaboration to make information and images of all manuscripts, paintings, textiles and artefacts from Dunhuang and archaeological sites of the Eastern Silk Road freely available on the Internet and to encourage their use through educational and research programmes.
IDP partner institutions which both provide data for and act as hosts to the multilingual website and database are:
Major IDP partners providing data include:
IDP’s many other collaborating institutions provide data and work on joint projects.
Read more about IDP…
What's New
The IDP Blog
The IDP hosts a blog featuring articles written by staff on various topics, including recent research, project updates, and more. Visit our blog here.
Project Publications
Team members working on IDP materials have recently published several new articles on project workflows and conservation techniques employed by the Lotus Sutra Project. These articles include:
China-UK Library Knowledge Exchange and Forum 2021/2022
Throughout 2021, the British Library, the National Library of China, and other library-related organisations in China have been hosting a knowledge exchange programme featuring insights on conservation issues related to their collections. In March 2022, the organisations hosted an online forum where presenters were able to answer questions on their research. The knowledge exchange will continue until July 2022.
The Georgetown-IDP Lecture Series: Following the Silk Roads to North America
In July and August 2021, the IDP and Georgetown University co-hosted a lecture series celebrating the upcoming completion of the Georgetown-IDP project, which has worked to incorporate images of Silk Road items in North American collections into the IDP’s public database and to expand the IDP's partnership with North American institutions. Generously supported by the Henry Luce Foundation and the Dunhuang Foundation, the project began in 2016 and will virtually bring together manuscripts and various types of objects dispersed widely in North America through over 1000 images. Learn more about the project here: The Georgetown-IDP Project.
The Georgetown-IDP Lecture Series: Following the Silk Roads to North America included talks from:
These videos are now available to view on our YouTube channel here.
What's On
Click here to see details of Conferences, Lectures, Exhibitions and other events.
Site Info
- Site last revised: September 2016.
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Site Credits
- Website design by Vic Swift of IDP.
- Database development and web integration by Michael Kaye of sendmetospace with additional support for Chinese version by Mark Mitchenall, using 4D database software and Active4D.
- General text written by Susan Whitfield with additional input from other members of IDP staff and translation by IDP staff in China, Russia, Japan and Germany.
- Some areas of the site such as Educational Projects, Resources, Research and Conservation Papers and My IDP projects are individually authored and accredited. IDP is not responsible for their content.