Digitisation apace at State Archives

In what is considered one of the largest projects of its kind undertaken by the AP State Archives and Research Institute, a whopping 4 lakh pages have been digitised in the last three months, taking the total of such records to 7, 74,000, while the entire work, involving some 50 million documents, may take more than a decade for completion. But what has enthused officials is that work has begun in right earnest.

Dr Zareena Parveen, Director, State Archives, said, “Almost 70 per cent of the records are in Persian and Arabic languages and of the 1,50,000 Mughal documents, 40,000 have already been catalogued.” A Persian scholar herself, Dr Zareena Parveen is well-versed with cursive Persian -- a form that most contemporary historians and language experts find it difficult to decipher. She is overseeing the digitisation work.

M A Raqeeb, Assistant Director, State Archives, says, “There is a lot of demand for records of the Asaf Jahi period as a number of Wakf property records, Inam land records and Atiyat land documents are available. Work is going on priority basis and will be done in phases.” The work has been outsourced and about 75,000 pages are being digitised per month. The institute plans to complete digitisation of 25 lakh documents by February 2014.

Along with the digitisation process, a complete overall of the infrastructure is under way. Dust, fire and theft proof compactor systems are being placed and the open racks would be removed over a period of time. The present store room would be air-conditioned. A senior official at the State Archives said, “Once a sizeable number of documents are digitised, they would be programmed into software and after a digital library is created the records would be offered through a web-enabled service.” M A Raqeeb says, “On an average, about 100 researchers from different parts of India, including scholars from across the world, come to the State Archives. Soon people will be in a position to acquire the documents online.”