In the past, various unexpected occurrences caused the culture and heritage of a community to be vanished. It can be natural disaster, war or unrest. Similarly in 1981, the Sri Lankan Tamil speaking community experienced the tragedy of loosing 97,000 of books including the original copy of "Yaalpaana Vaipava Maalai" (A book describes History of Jaffna Kingdom), palm leaf manuscripts related to medicine, historical moments and long term preserved newspapers like The Morning Star which was published since 1841. What they have loosed can not be replaced or recreated.
There Noolaham comes into picture in aiming of saving the remaining documents to be digitized and preserved for the future through digital media.
Noolaham Foundation, is a non-profit, non-governmental organization which was started by a group of young open minded people in 2005 to document and preserve the cultural heritage of Sri Lankan Tamil speaking community. The main concern of the initiative is to give open access for scholar resources to the scattered Tamil people around the globe through digital platforms.
Hi, I am Parathan. Currently, I have been working as an intern at Noolaham Foundation in helping out with IT related works like automating the process through programming. Its my pleasure to share how digitizing and preserving process are going and my overall experiences.
Till now, 90,000++ documents including:
Digitizing methods used in Noolaham Foundation
In the early stages of Noolaham, typing method was used. That is one has to read it aloud and the other one will type and publish it. They could publish around 100 books per year. The advancement & introduction of technology devices such as scanners helped the work easier.
Currently, 3 methods are used
How the digitization process of a book is done?
Some other links to read more about NoolahamThere Noolaham comes into picture in aiming of saving the remaining documents to be digitized and preserved for the future through digital media.
Hi, I am Parathan. Currently, I have been working as an intern at Noolaham Foundation in helping out with IT related works like automating the process through programming. Its my pleasure to share how digitizing and preserving process are going and my overall experiences.
Till now, 90,000++ documents including:
- printed documents such as books, magazines, journals, newspapers, newsletters, booklets, reports, souvenirs and felicitations, annual publications, posters, flyers and leaflets, fact sheets, invitations, memorial publications, dissertations, ephemera, trade and advertising publications and guidelines and handbooks, : noolaham.org
- Manuscripts archive
- Multimedia Archives including images, audios, videos and electronic medias : aavanaham.org
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| Collected Ola leaves / Manuscripts to be digitized |
Digitizing methods used in Noolaham Foundation
In the early stages of Noolaham, typing method was used. That is one has to read it aloud and the other one will type and publish it. They could publish around 100 books per year. The advancement & introduction of technology devices such as scanners helped the work easier.
Currently, 3 methods are used
- Flatbed Scanner: used while scanning the rare books page by page
- Sheet-fed Scanner: used while scanning the books which are existing in a plenty of amount. Here, the pages will be removed separately and feed in a bulk amount
- Camera Scanning: used while scanning the easily damaged documents like Ola leaves, old documents and brittle staged books
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| Scanning the documents using scanners |
- The copyright of the author or publication will be taken to digitize the book
- Considering the type & condition of pages of the book scanning method will be chosen
- Scanning process will be started and the pages will be scanned
- Checkers will then collect the scanned documents and check whether the scanned documents are having any faults. If there, it will sent back to re-scan. Else, it will be converted to PDF (Portable Document File) file format.
- Then the books details will be added to the metadata sheet (The detailed collection of the documents scanned)
- After that, in the noolaham web-page name and details of the books will be listed
- Finally, the books will be uploaded and published to the web-page
Often, the backups will be taken in 3 hard-disk to minimize the risk of data loss. When the hard-disks are filled by the back-upped files, those will be checked and finalized according to the list of digitized documents.
Aavanaham :
Aavanaham is multimedia archiving project initiated by Noolaham Foundation to document, preserve and archive images, audios, videos and other forms of multimedia such as education related resources like exam papers and tutorials guide for school students.
One of the ongoing process in Aavanaham is Oral History. More than 300 people were interviewed including Sri Lankan Tamil artists, teachers, farmers and different kind of people who are specialized in their profession. They share their experience and how they overcome from their struggles and sharing their memories.
Since, the current generation is involved mostly in watching and listening to the digital medias such audio and video platforms it will be a great opportunity for them to know how the Tamil culture has evolved in the past centuries.
Click here to view the Oral History Collection
Palm Leaf Manuscripts Digitization
In the ancient time palm leaves were used as papers and the writing nails used as pen to write. This project was initiated by Noolaham along with the collaboration of British Library under Endangered Archives Program.
The British Library helped and guided Noolaham with latest technologies and to digitize according to the standard digitizing methods.
Digitization of palm leaf manuscripts needs to be encouraged because they are the sources which give the information related to medicine, mathematics, astronomical observations, astrology, arts, folklore, local history, customs and laws that were created and followed in the past of Tamil culture. These manuscripts are owned by individuals or organizations from the past. Majority of these manuscripts have not been shared or published in print.
Since, the palm leaf can be easily damaged they need to be digitized very carefully. i.e: using DSLR cameras and color charts to digitize according to the digitizing standards.
The issues where Noolaham faces frequently are
If you are at Jaffna or planning to come for Jaffna, reserve your 1 hour of your valuable time at Noolaham to find out how they are doing.
The address of the Main Office at Jaffna is,
No. 185,
Aadiyapaatham Road,
Kokuvil,
Jaffna.
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| Scanned documents are being checked by the checkers |
Aavanaham is multimedia archiving project initiated by Noolaham Foundation to document, preserve and archive images, audios, videos and other forms of multimedia such as education related resources like exam papers and tutorials guide for school students.
One of the ongoing process in Aavanaham is Oral History. More than 300 people were interviewed including Sri Lankan Tamil artists, teachers, farmers and different kind of people who are specialized in their profession. They share their experience and how they overcome from their struggles and sharing their memories.
Since, the current generation is involved mostly in watching and listening to the digital medias such audio and video platforms it will be a great opportunity for them to know how the Tamil culture has evolved in the past centuries.
 |
| Uploading the documents to Aavanaham web-page |
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| Editing the Oral History Collection |
Palm Leaf Manuscripts Digitization
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| Palm Leaf Manuscript |
The British Library helped and guided Noolaham with latest technologies and to digitize according to the standard digitizing methods.
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| Cleaning the surface and the place to remove dust particles to digitize |
Since, the palm leaf can be easily damaged they need to be digitized very carefully. i.e: using DSLR cameras and color charts to digitize according to the digitizing standards.
The issues where Noolaham faces frequently are
- Contacting the copyright author or publisher related to get the copyright issues to digitize the book and upload the book in web-page.
- Educating the community about what is preservation and how to find the documents to digitize and preserve. Eg: newspaper
- The cost spent on salaries and buying necessary equipment for digitizing process
If you are at Jaffna or planning to come for Jaffna, reserve your 1 hour of your valuable time at Noolaham to find out how they are doing.
The address of the Main Office at Jaffna is,
No. 185,
Aadiyapaatham Road,
Kokuvil,
Jaffna.
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