Rare Oriya books, magazines digitized
Srujanika, a voluntary organization working towards promotion of science and digitization of rare books and documents, has accomplished a herculean task of digitizing several rare magazines and documents, over 150 years old.
“We undertook this exercise to help preserve the history of Odisha. We are planning to provide the online version of these magazines to libraries and educational institutes for the benefit of scholars and researchers,” said Nikhil Mohan Patnaik of Srujanika.
The digital compilation of 1,30,000 pages will be released at a function on February 17, he informed.
The organization has compiled 61 old and rare magazines and editions of 14 newspapers published between 1850 and 1950, painstakingly gathering the material from government offices, private collectors and rare books dealers.
Old timers looking to relive fond memories of cozy afternoons curled up with their favourite magazines and historians and researchers endeavouring to delve deeper into the rich literary heritage of Odisha can now access a host of old Odia magazines and newspapers online.
The collection includes early editions of literary magazines like ‘Prabodh Chandrika’ started in 1856, ‘Indradhanu’ which started publication in 1894, ‘Utkal Sahitya’ stared in 1897, 1934 to 1951 editions of ‘Naba Bharat’ volumes, ‘Kumkum’ – a hand-written magazine published from Bombay in 1940s and more. The newspaper compilation includes editions of ‘Utkal Dipika’ and ‘Baleswar Sambad Bahika’ – the first two Odia newspapers to be ever published, along with editions of dailies like ‘Asha’ and ‘Nabina’. The comilations include writings of noted writers like Fakir Mohan Senapati, Gopabandhu Das and Pandit Nilakantha Das, among others.
“We came across some of these magazines and newspapers while procuring old and important documents when we were working on the digitization of science writings in Odia between 1850 and 1950. Thereupon we came up with the idea of working on the compilation of old Odia magazines and newspapers to preserve and protect these documents for the future generation,” said Patnaik.
Sharing other details of their effort, Srujanika members recalled encountering several dealers for whom rare books is purely a business proposition and genuine collectors who have dedicated a lifetime of work and large sections of their homes to the material. Many of them stay in remote villages and don’t possess fancy degrees but have a great appreciation and respect for learning, their humble background notwithstanding.
“We want to thank all individuals who were gracious enough to share their collection with us but there are many bibliophiles who didn’t want to share rare documents under their care. We failed to convince a person who has two early volumes of ‘Utkal Dipika’ newspaper, which chronicles history like no other document, to share it with us. We even offered him Rs 40,000 to allow us to photocopy the papers, but he did not agree,” said Jiban Panda, an associate in the project. (Source – The Times of India)
