Digital Desk: In a significant development for Assamese literature, the Digitizing Assam initiative has digitized 1.28 million pages of rare Assamese texts in the last 3 years. This milestone adds value as the Assamese language was also recognized as a Classical Language on October 3.
This is a joint effort by the Nanda Talukdar Foundation (NTF) and the Assam Jatiya Bidyalaya Educational and Socio-Economic Trust. The technical support in the project was given by the Bohniman Systems pro bono. The remarkable project received assistance from Assam Sahitya Sabha, Dibrugarh University, Government of Assam, Oil India Ltd, NRL, North Lakhimpur College, and Royal Global University.
The initiative has been in progress for the past three years using three scanning machines. These digitized contents will be available on the website assamarchive.org without any charge.
The completion of the digitization of 1.28 million Assamese texts is the first phase and the project will now enter into the second phase. The second phase will now focus on strengthening searchability through OCR-AI technology.
The digitized project included all the editions of Orunodoi and prominent journals like Bahi, Abahan, Ramdhenu etc.
Mrinal Talukdar of NTF addressed a press conference and said, "The digitized collection includes journals, manuscripts, and books published between 1840 and 1970, focusing on works written in Sanskrit, Tai, and Assamese language. It includes 26,000 Xasipats, with content spanning
topics such as Vaishnavism, Buddhism, and ancient Assamese customs. The initiative has so far covered 41,071 issues of 496 journals and 33,970 books of different genres."
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