The Digital South Asia Library (DSAL) and The Digital Dictionaries of South Asia (DDSA) provide digital materials for reference and research on South Asia to scholars, public officials, business leaders, and other users. DDSA is a resource created to widen access to South Asian language dictionaries. Carefully selected dictionaries for each of the twenty-six modern literary languages of South Asia are mounted on the web for free and open access.

DSAL builds upon a highly successful two-year pilot project funded by the Association of Research Libraries' Global Resources Program with support from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation

The program is supported by a number of institutions. The most recent grant received was for Technological Innovation and Cooperation for Foreign Information Access (TICFIA) through the United States Department of Education. Other contibutors include the University of Chicago, the Ford Foundation (New Delhi), and The Asia Society.

The University of Chicago received two grants in 1999 to create and disseminate electronic dictionaries for the languages of South Asia. Funding was from the International Research and Studies Program within the Office of International Education and Graduate Programs at the U.S. Department of Education. Work on the first grant was conducted in collaboration with Columbia University and the Triangle South Asia Consortium in North Carolina.

The most recent funding has been a 2014 grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities and a 2020 grant from the International Research and Studies Program within the Office of International Education and Graduate Programs at the U.S. Department of Education.

Additional support has been provided by the South Asia Language Resource Center under grants from the Office of International and Graduate Programs at the U.S. Department of Education, the Committee on Southern Asian Studies at the University of Chicago, and the University of Chicago Library.

Bibliographic records for adding DSAL resources to local catalogs and opacs can be found here: Catalog records.

Whenever possible, the Digital South Asia Library and the Digital Dictionaries of South Asia use a Creative Commons license. However, some materials are governed by further copyright restrictions. The particular circumstances of each resource and any applicable license are described on the web page of that resource. If you have any further questions, please contact DSAL.