Since 1997, Hanoi artist Le Van Thao has worked tirelessly to realise his biggest dream: to create a once-in-a-lifetime book, which has through the years evolved into a sophisticated digital encyclopedia.
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| A picture of this young enthnic minority girl is among hundreds of thousands of photos in Enter Vietnam's collection |
For the man behind it, design artist Le Van Thao from The Gioi (World) Publisher in Hanoi, there is still a lot to do, possibly for every day until the end of his life, he said.
Thao said his idea for “Enter Vietnam”, the soon-to-released Vietnam online encyclopedia, started when he was looking for a picture of a winter day for the cover of a Hanoi magazine he designed.
He immediately knew what he wanted yet failed to remember its author, and he searched for weeks to no avail.
“When I could finally recall who the photographer was, he had already lost the original film. I then had to use another picture.
“It suddenly dawned on me then that we needed a digital photo archive for people who are in need. And it has to be online, so that everyone can have access to and use them.”
Thus, “Enter Vietnam” was, and since then Thao has collected hundreds of thousands of pictures about Vietnam covering all subjects, from its fauna and floras, to historical or religious heritage.
But an efficient online encyclopedia like this needs more than just a good database.
Thao said the website’s current interactive and multimedia interface was inspired by an overseas Vietnamese IT expert at the dawn of information technology during the 1990s.
“Through my job I got to know Huynh Luong Tam, a Vietnamese American who was a classmate of [Windows creator] Bill Gates.
“He enlightened me on things like Flash technology, flat screens dominations, and even touch screen computers.”
The ideas were too new for Thao to conceive of at the time, but they kept him thinking about a structure of presentation for his website.
“From then on I have preferred to design and think of the website as a herbal medicine cabinet where the data is clean, systemized, well-explained, and connected.”
Now only running on its demo version, Enter Vietnam promises to be an interesting find for any web users looking for a deeper information search than just basic Google search results.
By clicking on “Ca Tru” (a Northern ancient genre of chamber music featuring female vocalists) users can see everything from old archive photos of Ca Tru singers from a century ago, to new ones of each of its distinctive musical instruments.
Articles on the development of the art through different historical periods are also included, along with archive documentaries to give a more comprehensive description.
In the ancient fine art sections, the site provide information as detailed as the positions of each statue in a specific pagoda.
Enter Vietnam has gathered information from more than 300 temples already recognized as national heritage sites.
“I have shown this demo version to my art students. This is a really good way for them to memorize their lessons, not to mention the database captured many original artworks which have been damaged by either time or careless preservation work,” researcher and art lecturer Tran Hau Yen The of the Hanoi Fine Arts University said.
Certainly, the site’s sophistication and elaborate presentation require a huge workload and devotion from Thao, his two partners Nguyen Ba Ngoc and Ma Phuong Uyen, and other volunteers.
“Just to recreate Vietnam’s road systems, we drew thousands of vector files in half a year,” he said.
“We also have a team of contributing editors. They are top-notch experts in their respective fields, such as researcher Tran Hau Yen The, a specialist on ancient fine arts.”
Enter Vietnam will not block comments and feedbacks from users, and Thao says it will operate like an open encyclopedia which accepts readers’ input, in addition to mainstream information recognized by experts.
Enter Vietnam, the country’s first digital encyclopedia will be released in the beginning of 2013.
