New-to-me, from Deccan Herald: Wondering what to do with old gramophone records?. “Vikram Sampath, historian and author, launched Archive of Indian Music (AIM) in 2011, a private non-profit trust, to digitise and preserve old and rare Indian gramophone records. The digitised collection is available online on Soundcloud, for free.”
Indian Express: Enthusiasts encourage history and heritage through social media. “Every evening, without fail, literature, history and heritage enthusiasts get together on Clubhouse. The rooms, started by The Karwaan Club, are an initiative of Karwaan: The Heritage Exploration, a student-led history initiative. The club has more than 400 members, 1500 followers and welcomes anyone even slightly interested in exploring the past. Karwaan is not the first one, or the only one, to use social media to create a space where history can thrive.”
NDTV Education: National Library To Upload Books On Indian Culture On Web. “As part of its outreach drive for young generation readers, the National Library plans to upload on the web a select part of its voluminous collection, including books on Indian culture, a top official said Tuesday. Of the 20 lakh odd books in its possession, 5,000 titles under the Indian Culture section will be uploaded on the web in the coming months, the new officiating director general told reporters here.”
Muslim Mirror: An Indo-American’s pursuit for vanishing Islamic heritage sites. “Chennai: Mr. Siraj Thakor, from Toronto, Canada, has undertaken the monumental task of creating an online database of all the Islamic Heritage Sites of India. He likes to preserve it digitally and make it available to all to cherish the Islamic past of this great country. Mr. Siraj is looking for volunteers to assist him with the information on Islamic Heritage Sites in India.”
IANS: Srirangam Vishnu temple’s palm leaf manuscripts to be digitized. “There are six sets of palm leaves kept at the Sri Ranganathananda Swami temple museum at Srirangam for public view. The Hindu Religious and Charitable endowment (HR&CE) department officials have commenced filming the palm manuscripts at the temple museum.”
India Express: Government must be transparent about its plans for the National Archives of India. “The absence of public consultations and the aggressive pursuit of the Central Vista project during a national crisis raises important questions not just about the future of historical research, but about the state’s responsibilities towards its citizens. The curtailment of access to public spaces as part of the project also bears on the proposed changes to the National Archives Complex and the students, workers, bureaucrats, tour guides, local and international researchers who work in and around the complex.”
EurekAlert: Digital disclosure of Dutch East India Company archives by Huygens Institute. “Together with the VU Amsterdam, the National Archives, the International Institute for Social History and the Humanities Cluster of the Royal Netherlands Academy, the Huygens Institute for History of the Netherlands is building a state-of-the-art scientific infrastructure, enabling a better understanding of colonial history, the Dutch East India Company and the early-modern histories of countries and cultures of the Indian Ocean and Indonesian Archipelago Worlds.”
The Hindu: A portal for film archives. “To this day, there is a gap in documenting and archiving the history of Kannada cinema in an accessible way, which a new online portal… aims to fill. The portal, designed with fonts from yesteryear film posters, is drenched in nostalgia for old films, songs, their history, trivia, and rare-to-find photographs. Kannada is a language spoken in India. You can learn more about it here.
Telengana Today (India): Mammoth digitisation drive at TS Central Library. “Established in 1891, the State Central Library also known as Asafia Library is one of the biggest public libraries in the country with a collection of over 5 lakh books, newspapers and other periodicals. Over the last two decades, the digital library staff has scanned and digitised 45,704 books and now are in plans of making that digitised collection available online at a nominal cost.”
H-Asia: Announcing the Sajjad Zaheer Digital Archive. “The product of many years of work by many, many hands, the online archive is a portal to the private collection of Syed Sajjad Zaheer (1905-1973), renown Urdu litterateur and political activist. As the personal and working archive of an author, activist and family member, the Sajjad Zaheer Digital Archive is a rich collection of materials from letters to manuscripts to photographs.”
APN News: Goemcho Goenkar Aims To Save Goa, Goan Villages, Culture, Tradition, Food And Everything Goa, Digitally For Posterity. “Research for the initiative Goemcho Goenkar is supported by the Centre for Promoting Indian Economy, CPIE India. It’s an attempt to permanently archive Goa (food, culture, tradition, music, religious gatherings, festivals, old roads, bridges, wells, lakes, clothing, people, villages, everything about our existence) of today and generations gone by, for the future.”
The Indian Express: Assam’s century-old literary body turns a new page, will digitise its rich archive. “From the first Assamese language magazine to an ancient treatise on elephantology — publications of yore, some handwritten, some tattered and torn, some considered lost, will soon find a home online, courtesy a mammoth digitising project undertaken by Assam’s oldest literary and cultural body, the Asam Sahitya Sabha.”
The Hindu: Indian Memory Project: Time travel through the history of a nation. “During this pandemic, when old albums are being dusted off to rediscover the people in them, the Indian Memory Project, a visual-narrative online archive turns 10. Curator Anusha Yadav on how these sepia-tone pictures are tiny integers in the story of the subcontinent.”
Times of India: Egmore museum to start digitisation drive in October. “The move will also help India’s second oldest museum in updating its official portal with pictures of its rich collection. The digitisation drive will cover the accession register, a record that contains details of each artefact. According to museum sources, the project will take about six months.”
BW Education: Digital Library To Be Constructed In Uttarakhand For Preservation Of Sanskrit Manuscripts. “Uttarakhand Chief Minister’s Office (CMO) announced on Tuesday that a digital library will be constructed in the state for the preservation of Sanskrit manuscripts.”
