Chenla (http://chenla.la) is a not-for-profit INGO (international non-government organization) has been established to develop and build an infrastructure made up of open/free technical standards, software and hardware designs and social templates for building sustainable digital libraries and archives which can survive for centuries, long after we as individuals have passed beyond living memory.

The idea is pretty simple. Every community will have their own local library which reflects their own cultural, language and economic needs today. And every community will help maintain distributed copies of a larger global archive that safeguards the past and preserves the present, so that it can be passed on to the next generation and beyond.

Chenla’s long term goal is to establish a global network of free and open digital repositories which will preserve mankind’s collective memory and experience for future generations.

The first two of these archives will be located in Champasak in southern Laos DPR and in Balboa Park, in San Diego, California in the United States.

The Chenla Board of advisers, includes both community leaders, academic, and technical experts who steers the direction of the standards, software, and content collections it developed by different projects.