Monday, February 29, 2016

Archives clubs to come up in colleges



Department of Archives in order to create awareness among students about importance of preserving ancient manuscripts and centuries old palm leaves is mulling to set up achieves club in colleges across the state.

As a pilot project the Maharaja Bifurcated College in Mysuru along with colleges in KR Nagar, Mangaluru and Chikkamangaluru have been selected. In the coming academic years more such Archives Club will be established all over the State. A grant of Rs 10,000 will be released to such colleges to set up the archives club.

The intention of establishing the Club is to make the students and faculty aware of the importance of preserving archives, ancient historical records, which records the evolution of our culture and tradition, so that the knowledge of the ancients is preserved for posterity.

Under the programme, students will be explained in detail about the various scientific methods adopted for the preservation of ancient written records along with practical demonstration, how they can make use of the department, visit to the local Archives department apart from conducting special lectures from experts in the field.

Gavi Siddaiah, Deputy Director of Archives said that awareness on the importance of Department of Archives is less not only among students but also amongst the general public.

'Through this initiative we want to motivate students to visit the Archives and put to use materials on history, already being updated in the websites. By referring to such historical records, students and researchers can bring out new insights about the past. They can even pursue a career in this field and the club endeavors to educate them while they are still studying in colleges.'

'The preserved documents throws light on the past history of our ancients from which we can still learn many a lesson. This also sometimes helps remove some of the myths and legends surrounding the ancients and see them in a new light,' he adds.

Research Scholar Mamtha says: 'There is an immediate need of setting up Archives club in colleges, as majority of them are unaware about the functions of this Department. The practice of referring to archives while writing or publishing scholarly articles should be encouraged as this provides authenticity to the matter.'

'With Mysore already having the distinction of being a heritage city, people can now know the distinctive features the city has to got to earn this Heritage tag,' she added.

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