[4] In 1965 he went to India under a Foreign Area Fellowship Program (Ford Foundation) grant to study with living exponents of all of the Tibetan Buddhist and Bönpo traditions.

He stayed in Jakarta running the Southeast Asian programs until 1994 when he was assigned to the Library of Congress Middle Eastern Office in Cairo.

[3] He briefly worked as a consultant for Trace Foundation for the establishment of the Himalayan and Inner Asian Resources in New York, an organisation dedicated to the preservation and dissemination of Tibetan literature.

As introductions to Tibetan literature, culture and history, these had circulated since the early 1980s amongst students and researchers, and had acquired a sort of cult status.

[8] Variety called the film "an affectionate tribute to the late E. Gene Smith, the scholar, librarian and ex-Mormon who waged a 50-year struggle to save the endangered texts of Tibetan Buddhism.