The old books and manuscripts, that constitute a part of India’s history and heritage, kept at the Andhra Pradesh State Archive and Research Institute (APSARI), the only such centre in the state, will soon go online.
The APSARI is planning to digitise its archive in order to preserve the rare collection of books and manuscripts, some of which date back to 1407 AD.
Most of these historical chronicles are brittle and damaged.
“Recently, the government set up an eight-member advisory committee headed by archive’s director as chairman to take decisions on the project of conservation and digitisation of the the archive,” director of APSARI Zareena Parveen said.
Under higher education department, the state government will release a fund of `1 crore as first instalment of the project.
“On Thursday, the advisory committee will have a meeting on the project, after which the committee would call for tenders for contact of dititising.
If everything goes on time, the project will be completed December end this year,” she said.
The APSARI collaborated with the National Mission for Manuscripts (NMM) to set up a centre for manuscripts conservation and preservation.
“NMM released Rs 5 lakh for preserving the manuscripts.
MCC has taken up conservation and curative treatment which covers fumigation, hole filling and lamination, to give longer life to palm leaves and manuscripts,” she said.
So far, around 532 valuable and rare manuscripts of different languages like Persian, Urdu, Arabic, Telugu and English and have been been preserved at the APSARI.
The archives are a treasure trove of information not just on Nizams but also British rulers, Mughals and Delhi Sultans, assistant director of APSARI S Ramakrishna said, adding that in furture, the deaprtment may upload all the digitised documents on the website for the convenience of global scholars, who cannot visit AP to read the documents.
KS Rao, a researcher at University of Hyderabad said conservation and preservation of manuscripts is useful to scholars and opined that the data should be put on the internet so that scholars across the world can access the information.