NEW DELHI: Jamia Millia Islamia has acquired a high-value state-of-art scanning device to scale-up the digitisation unit of its central library — Dr Zakir Hussain Library.
The move was taken to promote online teaching and preserve the art, history, culture and a large number of its rarest of the rare manuscripts and archival documents for posterity.
The digital preservation of these archival documents will not only provide easy accessibility of these resources to its national and international scholars but also enhance the sphere of academic research. The scanning machine is made in France and can scan a page in less than a second.
The features of the scanner are real-time colour preview, automatic glass opening, electrical flat and v-shaped book cradle, LED cold lighting, automatic cropping, automatic curvature correction.
“Dr Zakir Husain Library is first among central universities of India to have a modern and efficient digitisation unit in the country. With this unit, the library proposes to undertake the phase-wise digitisation of historical manuscripts, rare books, old serials, archival newspapers in Arabic, Persian, Urdu, and English languages at a larger scale,” said Ahmad Azeem, PRO of the university.
The library will digitise archival items related to university’s history such as photographs, private papers of university’s founder and benefactors like Mahatma Gandhi, Hakim Ajmal Khan and Dr Zakir Husain etc.
Who else installed it
The scanner is installed at top university libraries like John Hopkins, University of Pittsburgh, University of Central Florida, Graduate Institute of Geneva, National Library of France, Library of Hagen’s University