Telangana State Archives and Research Institute to go digital

Hyderabad: Students, research scholars, historians and history enthusiasts will soon be able to access archives of the Telangana State Archives and Research Institute at the click of a button as the institute will soon launch a digital library. To start with, former Hyderabad Secretariat files from 1896, departmental records of GAD, Home from 1890 to […]

Hyderabad: Students, research scholars, historians and history enthusiasts will soon be able to access archives of the Telangana State Archives and Research Institute at the click of a button as the institute will soon launch a digital library.

To start with, former Hyderabad Secretariat files from 1896, departmental records of GAD, Home from 1890 to 1947 and Persian records comprising jagirs from 1880-1880, land grants transactions and Army records pertaining to the Nizam period will be made available in the digital library. Following this, a staggering 1.55 lakh historical records pertaining to the Shah Jahan and Aurangzeb periods will be kept in the digital library.

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Initially, the Institute will make available archival content as reference material in the digital library and upon request, a photocopy of the material will be provided with user charges. For this initiative, the Institute is coming up with a new website. Access to the digital library will be through the user ID and password.

History enthusiasts and research scholars should register with the Institute and then be provided a user ID and password to access the content. For this digital library, the Institute had already commenced the digitisation of the records. After digitisation, a catalogue for each record is created and the same will be hosted in the digital library. So far, the Institute has successfully digitized over 25,000 records.

The Institute has been conserving and preserving a treasure trove of over 43 million documents including the country’s second oldest record-a farman of Firoz Shah Bahmani of the Bahmani Sultanate in the 14th century. The Farman, dating way back to May 14, 1406 AD, was handwritten in Persian language and was for granting land as ‘inam’ to Moulana Muhammad Qazi.

Of the 43 million documents 90 per cent were in Persian and Urdu languages. The Institute, in a couple of months, will throw its revamped archival museum open. The museum will exhibit the country’s second oldest document besides 200 other important records.