Tibetan culture created three major dictionaries in the twentieth century that were made to correspond to the style of a Western dictionary. Prior to that, Tibetans did not create or use many dictionaries and the few that were created before that time were usually word lists without alphabetic arrangement. These were not intended as reference works, rather, they were intended as items to be read from cover to cover and absorbed by the reader, with no further reference being required or intended. One well-known such dictionary was actually a sort of story which defined words as part of the story. It is an interesting read but of little use to people from other cultures.
Thus, earlier Tibetan dictionaries are almost useless as reference works, which is why neither there has been no interest in digitising them for computerized use. However, their content for the most part can be found in modern day dictionaries such as this one in a form that does work for people of other cultures.
One Western scholar came to me saying that he wanted to track down the changes in meanings of certain words through the centuries and wanted to see these early dictionaries as part of that research. I pointed out that, unlike with English and other European languages, the meanings of Tibetan words stayed the same over a period of nearly thirteen centuries (650 C.E. to 1950 C.E. roughly stated). This was because the culture was dedicated to preserving spiritual meaning rather than inventing new meanings. As part of that, any given word had a certain value and that was faithfully transmitted down through the centuries. Thus, if you were to read these early word lists, you would find that the definitions in them are no different to what is being used today.
Personally, I went through a period where I hunted down and collected all of the early dictionaries, ever hopeful that I would find something of use in its own right. I had a plan to make as many of these dictionaries available as possible for the use of other translators. However, I found that it was an un-necessary task. The contents of these dictionaries were not really different from the contents of modern dictionaries and their arrangement made them of little use. In the end, I incorporated the content of several important ones into the Illuminator, rather than publishing them separately. So, doing one liberated all, which is an exceptionally bad pun on a famous Tibetan saying གཅིག་ཤེས་ཀུན་གྲོལ་ “knowing one liberates all”, where the word "liberates" also means to decode or decipher. One dictionary, the Illuminator, does it all, so to speak.