CM Himanta Biswa Sarma dedicates 'Digitizing Asom' to public

Guwahati (Assam) [India], May 12 : Assam Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma dedicated 'Digitizing Asom', a community project aimed at digitization of rare Assamese journals and books published between 1813 and 1970, for public use at an event in Guwahati, on Thursday.

'Digitizing Asom' seeks to digitise every possible rare Assamese language book and journal, regardless of their location, and make them available to the public through the website www.assamarchive.org. It can be accessed free of cost.

The Assam Chief Minister said the launch of 'Digitizing Asom' would prove decisive in conferring the world of Assamese literature its rightful exalted status in days to come. He said that the 19th century saw a new dawn for Assamese literature, and credited literary stalwarts such as Lakshminath Bezbaruah, Chandra Kumar Agarwala, and Hemchandra Goswami with its forward march.

Sarma added, "The 20th century brought greater avenues for the growth of Assamese literature."

Digitizing Asom is an initiative of the Nanda Talukdar Foundation and is supported by the Assam Jatiya Bidyalay Educational and Socio-Economic Trust. Journals published between 1840 and 1970 have been included in the first phase of the project. They encompass 3,071 editions of as many as 161 journals with 2,45,680 pages. The second phase of the project will cover books published between 1813 and 1962. .