PANAJI
A Central government sponsored project is helping Goa’s Central Library at EDC Patto Plazza digitise thousands of books from its ‘rare book’ section including centuries-old Portuguese language books from its collection.
The work in progress involves scanning the rare books page by page and converting them into digital format.
Apart from making these rare books easily accessible to the public, their digitisation will ensure they are preserved, an issue which the library’s authorities have been facing due to erratic air-conditioning systems.
The Central Library has some 7,000 rare Portuguese books in its collection and once the entire project is completed, a decision will be taken whether or not to upload them on the Internet. As of now, whatever number of books have been digitised will only be made accessible to the public physically at the library’s premises.
An official said, the scanning and digitisation of the books have been contracted out to a private agency -- SG Informatics -- and are 100 per-cent funded by the Central Culture Ministry. However, once the central fund is exhausted, the State government will have to step in to finish the digitisation of all the books, the official added.
