The National Library starts digitisation process of documents

The National Library has made acquisition of an A0 Scanner and has developed a Document Management System (DMS), both costing around Rs 5 million each.

This is part of the project aimed at digitising documents. The other phases of the project which consist in the scanning of 1.6 million documents, uploading the DMS, indexing, tagging, classification and web portal projection, will start in October 2021. 

Taking stock of the processes of the A0 Scanner, Minister of Arts and Cultural Heritage, Avinash Teeluck, said the implementation of the DMS will both contribute to the revamping of the way archives are being preserved. 

The overall objective of the project, he said, is to better preserve our archives and provide easy online access to the public. As regards the DMS, he indicated that it provides the facility to store, manage, and maintain the digitised documents.

He added that to date some 60,000 pages of newspapers in A4 format have been scanned.

Some 1.6 million documents dating back to 1835 will be scanned and the Optical Character Recognition system being used will enable readers to carry out research in the archives through keywords.

Source: GIS Mauritius