Digitising old manuscripts a national mission: Kalam

President A P J Abdul Kalam on Monday said digitisation of old manuscripts is a national mission and suggested using nano powders to restore damaged images and messages. Launching a digital mobile lab for manuscripts in Bangalore, Kalam said it would be possible to reconstruct images and words by spraying of nano powders and preserve them in digital format. Many of the world's libraries have used this method, he added.

Noting that India's civilisation is more than 5,000 years old, the President said many of the manuscripts were yet to be recovered, deciphered and analysed. More importantly, an expert team should be created to analyse those manuscripts, he said and suggested setting up of a school to undertake this task.

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"Digitisation of old manuscripts is a national mission. We should see to it that all schools, colleges and universities digitise their libraries in their own native language and connect to the outside world in the next four years," he said.

According to officials, the lab is aimed at conserving, digitising and disseminating manuscripts of India and would assist in creation of a national digital manuscripts library by the National Mission for Manuscripts.