After a long wait, the Telangana State Archives and Research Institute (TSARI) will now have a website of its own, a descriptive catalogue of documents it houses and digitised archival records.
The move comes after several stories were carried in these columns which underscored the state of affairs at the TSARI, including a pressing need for preservation of documents, the disrepair of the building in Tarnaka from which it operates, the number of vacant posts there, and a lack of adequate funds. Further, the TSARI had pointed to the State government the pressing need for additional funds for digitisation of its records.
A government order which was recently issued had sanctioned a total of ₹ 1 crore for digitisation of records, preparing a descriptive catalogue, and DMS, digital library and website. The TSARI will also hire on a temporary basis four Persian to English translators, and six Urdu to English translators. This is being done for cataloguing of archival records, and other translation work.
“We were facing problems in terms of digitisation. Work had abruptly halted a few years ago. There are lakhs of folios here and many of them need to be digitised. While the Andhra Pradesh Archives has a website of its own, we do not. The budget allocation is much needed. However, we will now request the government to ask the Telangana State Technology Servies to take up digitisation,” a source at the TSARI said.
Crucial issue
But while the sources welcomed the budgetary sanction, they also pointed out that the crucial issue of mending vulnerable and damaged documents has not been addressed in the GO. “We hope that this too will be looked into soon. Mending of documents requires very little funding,” the source said.
The TSARI, once known as Daftar-e-Diwani, is the largest repository, in terms of volume, of historical records in the country. It has as many as 43 million documents, with some belonging to 1406 CE. It houses documents from 14 departments of the Asaf Jahi Dynasty. The TSARI building was inaugurated in 1965 by then Prime Minister Lal Bahadur Shastri.
While the TSARI has a sanctioned staff strength of 72, as many as 33 posts are vacant. The Director of the institution Zareena Parveen, an expert of the Persian language, has been discharging duties on a contractural basis.
