Old meets new: Digital preservative: Scan. Repair. Save.

E-library to have historic records on Karachi’s architecture, heritage and origin.

KARACHI:

In a heap of documents gathering dust in the Karachi Municipal Corporation (KMC) building’s store room was a map of a mosque built in 1912. The design of the mosque was commissioned by the Kharadar Muslim community to a Jewish architect, Moses Somake.

The KMC building is chock-full of such examples. Hidden away in the store room is the heritage of a city that was once home to many communities with no distinctions in cast or creed.

This wealth of forgotten history inspired the City District Government, Karachi, (CDGK) and the Heritage Foundation to launch a digital library, The Karachi-e-Library (TKeL). The library is being funded by the German consulate general, Karachi.

The library will archive manuscripts, journals, books, images, stamps, letters, correspondence, municipality documents and demographic and urban studies collected over 100 years.

Stocking up the e-library

The Heritage Foundation’s chief executive, Yasmeen Lari, told The Express Tribune that the Karachi Municipal Records uncovered maps dating back to 1984 along with the names of architects who have designed many of the city’s buildings. “They not only tell of the pattern of development in the city but also show that, despite having the same number of communities in the city as now, people were more tolerant and the laws were observed more carefully,” she said.

The project was started in July 2009 when the e-Library was first launched. “It is one of the very first projects aimed at archiving our intangible heritage,” said Lari. The aim is to create the world’s largest and most comprehensive e-Library on the city. They want to ensure the long-term survival of the city’s intellectual and cultural heritage and to affiliate the library with the leading libraries of the world.

“You go to Google, type in ‘Karachi’ and you will not get a single book in 10 pages on the city by its own people,” said an enthusiastic member of the project. TKeL will help future researchers, academics and historians understand Karachi’s history, cartography, heritage and the identity of its people, he said.

In a corner of the display room, five workers of the Archive and Research Wing of the CDGK were sorting documents. In a separate room, the Heritage Foundation’s architects and students sat scanning, repairing and digitalising records.

Getting children involved

At least 70 students from three schools filed into the KMC building for the project’s second outreach programme. The Kids University and Rasheeda School in Golimar were two of the schools invited. One was a private institution while the other was for children of low-income households. Lari explained that they chose schools from contrasting socio-economic backgrounds because they all have a hand in shaping the city’s heritage, she added.

The students brought their families’ photographs and old records with them. They were taught to clean, repair, scan and copy these old documents and were given preservation kits replete with acid-free files.

To their delight, the students were greeted by a 95-year-old collector, Lutfullah Khan. He has been collecting everything he can get his hands on since he was a child. Even the spotless white suit he was wearing was bought in 1951. “I have a collection of stamps, shells, stationery and even voices!” he told his bright-eyed audience.

The awestricken children pelted him with questions about his collection. They wanted to know how long he has been collecting, and how he was able to record voices in the 50’s.

An eight grader at Woodland Secondary School, Maria Sohail, solemnly swore to preserve letters from her dada dadi (grandparents) and all her gifts. Others, such as Ramla Alvi from Kids University, promised to preserve their documents in their new acid-free files.

Later, they queued into the galleries and gapped at the archives that were “older than their parents”, as one student put it.

Published in The Express Tribune, May 26^th, 2011.