Scan, upload, preserve: Mobile app to decentralise digitisation of Assamese language books

A special mobile application will soon enable the digitisation of manuscripts or books in Assamese language by their owners and link them to one of the largest digital repositories of publications in the language under an ongoing community-driven project. Under the Digitising Assam project, 2.76 million Assamese archival documents, including books, journals, manuscripts and rare historical records, have already been digitally preserved and are available at assamarchive.org.

A special mobile application will soon enable the digitisation of manuscripts or books in Assamese language by their owners and link them to one of the largest digital repositories of publications in the language under an ongoing community-driven project. The mobile app is aimed at decentralising the digitisation initiative led by the Nanda Talukdar Foundation (NTF) and supported by the Assam Jatiya Bidyalay Educational and Socio-Economic Trust. Under the 'Digitising Assam' project, 2.76 million Assamese archival documents, including books, journals, manuscripts and rare historical records, have already been digitally preserved and are available at assamarchive.org. In the next phase, NTF is preparing to launch a mobile app that will transform ordinary smartphones into scanning devices, foundation secretary Mrinal Talukdar told PTI. ''The goal of this innovation is to decentralise digitisation and give it the form of a mass movement across Assam, where people can scan books, journals and manuscripts from their own homes and contribute to this knowledge repository,'' he said. The yet-to-be-named application, which is set for a June launch, will be available for Android users only and the documents scanned and uploaded on it will undergo a process of vetting and approval before it enters the assamarchive.org repository. ''There will be no geographical boundaries and anyone from any corner of the earth can be linked with this project through the mobile application, be it as uploaders or in the approval process,'' Talukdar stressed. He said there are also plans to link this work with student internships within the framework of the National Education Policy (NEP), so that academic participation and cultural preservation become bound together in a single thread. Along with the application, the NTF will also launch its 'Digitizing Assam 2.0', which will make the 2.76 million archived documents fully keyword-searchable, the secretary said. ''This is not merely a technological achievement, it is a historic moment in which the doors of the Assamese world of knowledge are being thrown open to everyone,'' Talukdar said. He said a dedicated technological collaboration with Borno Labs (led by Kabyanil and Indranil Talukdar) and Bohniman Systems (led by Abhijit Bhuyan) has made it possible to make the entire repository keyword-searchable. ''These two teams have used advanced artificial intelligence to decode, index and organise this vast repository of Assamese text and data. In terms of language processing, this is among the most complex and computationally challenging work undertaken in India,'' he said. A mostly community-driven project, the Oil India Limited has also extended financial patronage to it, Talukdar added.