Worldwide interest in books as artefacts and ritual objects has raised new questions as digital technology is radically transforming book production and circulation. What is a book? Can it be really reduced to its content and therefore easily made obsolete by more efficient mediums of communication? How does a culture-specific understanding of the book as object relate to technological innovation? This project will contribute to the broad cross-cultural debate by looking at books in the Tibetan context, where its civilization has considered literary artefacts as crucial throughout its history and has developed appropriate technologies over the centuries. The research will focus on printing as a technological innovation that developed fairly rapidly in Tibet in the 14th–15th centuries and remains little documented and understood as a process involving technical, economic, political and religious factors.The proposed research spans a range of different disciplines, including Tibetology, philology, codicology, history, anthropology, chemistry, geography, archaeology and art history. It has three interconnected aims, to: 1) assemble and study early Tibetan prints from South Western Tibet by using new technologies and methods, 2) understand Tibetan book production and use in its historical and cultural context, 3) explore the relevance of Tibetan technological innovation for cross-cultural questions inspired by work on the ‘printing press’ as an agent of change in European history and by Roger Chartier’s call for the study of xylography within the wider exploration of technological innovation in communication.The research will reach beyond academia by being reflected in a public exhibition of Tibetan books as literary artefacts and by facilitating the digital repatriation of Tibetan texts preserved in Europe (especially in the UK and Italy) to Tibetan communities in their land of origin to help rebuild their cultural and spiritual heritage.