Monday,
September 8, 2003 |
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Feature |
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PTU’s digital library
endeavour
PUNJAB
Technical University (PTU) has taken up the task of digital preservation
of the significant literary, artistic and scientific works and other
documents lying in various libraries, archives and personal libraries to
be made freely available in every nook and corner of the world.
According to information,
this project is part of universal digital library project started by the
Carnegie Melon University, USA, and the Indian Institute of Science,
Bangalore, and it aims at digitilisation and Web hosting one million
books by 2005. The Baba Banda Singh Bahadur Engineering (BBSBE) College,
Fatehgarh Sahib, has been set as a scanning centre under this project
and is currently doing the work of scanning the documents and rare
manuscripts of the language department Punjab. As per reports, talks are
already underway with the archives department of Punjab for the
preservation of rare manuscripts and other valuable documents. The
process of digital preservation involves scanning, image processing and
optical character recognition.
Under this project, the
college has received a high end Minolta 7000 scanner, which can scan
10,000 pages per day along with image processing and OCR software by the
Carnegie Melon University as a part of grant to implement this work.
More than 5,000 pages have been scanned so far.
D. S. Hira, principal of
the college, says until now, the transmission of our cultural heritage
has depended on limited numbers of copies in fragile media. He says in a
thousand years, only a few of the paper documents we have today would
survive the ravages of deterioration, loss, and outright destruction.
He adds with more 100
million books since the beginning of recorded history, the task of
preservation was bigger but with new digital technology, though, this
task was within the reach and this effort can be distributed to
libraries, museums, and other groups in all countries. He also expressed
gratitude of PTU VC Y. S. Rajan for assigning this vital project to the
college. — UNI
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