Dharwad: The Department of Archives has embarked on a novel project to digitise age-old documents and manuscripts shedding light on the history and culture of our country, said Minister for Kannada and Culture Umashree.
Laying the foundation stone for a new building of the regional centre of the State Archives Department at the Karnataka University campus in Dharwad, Umashree said the digitisation project was progressing smoothly. So far, nearly 60 lakh pages of various documents have been digitalised. The project is aimed at preserving and conserving the historical and cultural documents for posterity. Along with the documents available at the state administration, the valuable and rare documents pertaining to Indian history have been borrowed from the British Library and preserved to make it available for the research works, she said.
Referring to North Karnataka region, Umashree said about 60,000 rare documents which are written in the age old Modi script have been collected from the Bombay Archives. They have been digitised and uploaded on the Kanaja website. Recently, the department had taken steps to translate the legendary Kannada work of Kavirajamarga and made it available to a larger audience, she added.
Umashree said the proposed new building at Dharwad would come up at the cost of Rs 1 Crore.
Department of Archives Director N R Vishu Kumar said the government had decided to have a three-day special programme in all the districts in December to mark the foundation day programme of the Archives Department.
