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His Holiness the Dalai Lama conceived of and founded the Library of Tibetan Works and Archives. The cornerstone for the library's impressive Tibetan-style building was laid on 11 June 1970 in the hill station of Dharamsala, northern India. Having begun life with two humble collections in Tibetan and English, the library is now a repository for significant collections of artifacts, manuscripts and other records, while also serving as a centre for language and cultural education.

TLI offers a bridge to the ancient wisdom traditions of Tibet as well as the contemporary Tibetans. Our Institute presents classes, seminars, workshops, and public lectures on Tibetan language, culture, literature, and philosophy (this includes on-going programs of study of Tibetan texts, conversational Tibetan, calligraphy, and lectures by guest speakers). All programs are organized by executive director David Curtis who studied at Kagyu Ling Monastic College in France.

This conference, jointly organized by Columbia University, Shang Shung Institute, Tibetan Buddhist Research Center and Trace Foundation follows two previous conferences convened in 1987 and 1992 in India and Italy respectively. We are holding this conference in New York, a location that is, by all appearances, very far from the Tibetan Plateau. In Tibet we have a proverb that says “every valley has its own language,” but one could easily say that in New York every street has its own language.