GUWAHATI, A special mobile application will soon enable digitization of Assamese manuscripts or books by their owners and link them to one of the largest digital repositories of publications in the language under an ongoing community-led project.
The mobile app aims to decentralize the digitization initiative led by the Nanda Talukdar Foundation and supported by the Assam Jatiya Pidalai Educational, Socio-Economic Trust.
Under the Digitization of Assam project, 2.76 million Assamese archival documents, including books, journals, manuscripts and rare historical records, have already been digitally preserved and are available on assamarchive.org.
In the next phase, the NTF is preparing to launch a mobile application that will turn ordinary smartphones into scanning devices, Foundation Secretary Mrinal Talukdar told PTI.
“The aim of this innovation is to decentralize digitization and give it the form of a mass movement across Assam, where people can scan books, magazines and manuscripts from their homes and contribute to this repository of knowledge,” he said.
The yet-to-be-named app, which is scheduled to launch in June, will be available to Android users only and documents scanned and uploaded to it will go through a screening and approval process before they enter the assamarchive.org repository.
“There will be no geographical boundaries and anyone from any corner of the earth can be connected to this project through the mobile application, be it as loaders or in the approval process,” Talukdar stressed.
He said there are also plans to link this work with student training under the National Education Policy, so that academic engagement and cultural preservation become linked together in one thread.
Along with the app, the NTF will also launch the ‘Digitizing Assam 2.0’ programme, which will make 2.76 million archived documents fully searchable by keywords, the secretary said.
“This is not just a technological achievement, but a historic moment when the doors to the Assamese world of knowledge are opened to everyone,” Talukdar said.
A dedicated technology collaboration with Borno Labs and Bohniman Systems made it possible to make the entire repository searchable for keywords, he said.
“These two teams have used advanced artificial intelligence to decode, index and organize this huge repository of Assamese texts and data. In terms of language processing, this is among the most complex and computationally difficult work being done in India,” he said.
Oil India Limited, a predominantly community-led venture, also provided financial sponsorship for it, Talukdar added.
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