State Archives digitises 3.74 lakh documents

Hyderabad: AP State Archives and Research Institute has successfully completed the pilot project of digitising 3,74,000 documents pertaining to ex-Hyderabad Secretariat and State GOs from 1896 and 1920 respectively.

Principal Secretary for higher education department Ajay Mishra released a digitisation CD at State Archives office in Tarnaka on Tuesday. Commending the staff, Ajay Mishra observed that it was one of the largest projects of its kind on digitisation the archival history of Andhra Pradesh. He added that it would give a paradigm shift to the mechanism of the research on history.

In the wake of RTI Act in practice, he pointed out that the digitised records should be accessible to everyone. Ajay Mishra assured of more funds as and when necessary for the digitisation process.

Meanwhile, former vice chancellor of Osmania University Prof. Suleman Siddiqui said that Rs 2 crore given to AP State Archives and Research Institute was the biggest grant ever made for digitisation.State Archives director Dr Zareena Parveen informed that the total number of 3,73,134 documents that have been scanned/microfilmed and digitised so far would be uploaded into the server proposed for this project.

The reference media and the scanned image of the original documents of some rare records would also be made available online, she said and added that the movable compactor systems on par with the national archive of United Kingdom would replace age old system of open racks for the storage and preservation of old records.A Earlier, Ajay Mishra released a copy of the Itihaas Journal on this occasion.