In a country of 800 million internet users, getting historical documents digitised and online is essential not just for posterity by preserving valuable historical texts, but for the future of the country.
India – The Servants of Knowledge, a non-profit organization, has successfully digitised 11,720 books from Bengaluru’s Gandhi Bhavan library as part of the All India Gandhi Library project. This initiative, announced during the 75th anniversary seminar of the Gandhi Smaraka Nidhi Organisation, aims to preserve and make accessible a vast collection of Gandhian literature.
The digitised collection, assembled over three months, spans 12 languages and includes Mahatma Gandhi’s collected works, including Harijan and Young India, and audio recordings of his speeches on All India Radio.
In a country of 800 million internet users, getting historical documents digitised and online is essential not just for posterity by preserving valuable historical texts, but for the future of the country. The project democratises access to Gandhian literature, making it available to not just a national, but a global audience.
But digitising old and fragile documents is not straight-forward.
Carl Malamud, a public domain advocate and part of the Servants of Knowledge, detailed the digitisation process. The team uses locally made scanners and frames, capable of scanning 15 lakh (1.5 million) pages monthly. The process includes cropping, de-skewing, optical character recognition, and creating PDF files. For fragile materials, they collaborate with INTACH for conservation.
The digitised libraries have been presented to 12 Gandhian organizations. The Servants of Knowledge plans to continue digitising additional Gandhian materials from other organisations at no cost. They are also working on digitising collections from Lalbagh and other institutions in Bengaluru.
Read more at Indian Express.
This post first appeared in the TNPS LinkedIn newsfeed.
