Web storage crunch hits manuscripts mission
NEWDELHI:Having
digitised about 2.20 lakh manuscripts with 2.5 crore pages since its launch in
2003, the National Mission for Manuscripts (NMM) is facing shortage of web
space for its portal where it wants to upload these documents for public
access.
Around 80,000 DVDs containing the manuscripts are kept at
Indira Gandhi National Centre for the Arts in boxes and almirahs.
As
against its requirement of one thousand terabytes (TB), the the government-run
National Informatic Centre has promised it a minuscule 50TB space.
About
80,000 DVDs on which the NMM has stored the documents remain stashed in
corrugated carton boxes and steel almirahs dumped in the corridors of the
Indira Gandhi National Centre for the Arts.
NMM
is India’s ambitious initiative that aims at documenting, digitising and
preserving about 5 lakh decaying manuscripts.
“We
have a huge task of uploading the content of about 80,000 DVDs on our website —
www.namami.gov.in — for which we require about 700TB space. In total, we may
require 1,000TB for the entire project. But we have been promised only 50TB,
which does not solve our purpose,” said a senior official associated with the
NMM.
The
official said that the very idea of allowing the students, scholars,
researchers, and authors access to the manuscripts was getting defeated as the
mission was unable to upload the soft copies of manuscripts on its website for
want of webspace.
The
NMM officials are worried the material stored in the DVDs could get washed off
or the discs may get corrupted since the DVDs have a finite shelf life.
The
NMM is also working on documenting and digitising manuscripts lying abroad and
would need webspace for the same as well for uploading it on its website.
According to the NMM officials, around 60,000 Indian manuscripts were deported
in European countries during the British rule while another 150,000 manuscripts
in South Asia and other Asian countries.
There
are around 5 million manuscripts in India out of which only 1 million have been
catalogued so far, according to a report by the Netherlands-based International
Federation of Library Associations and Institutions’ World Library and
Information Congress, 2013.
Source | Hindustan Times | 16th October 2017
Regards
Pralhad
Jadhav
Senior Manager @
Knowledge Repository
Khaitan &
Co
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