Dear fellow Wiki[p|m]edians/ independent researchers, This is just to bring to your attention that the National Archives of India have made a major advance with digitizing their contents and it presents an opportunity that will be quite exciting for those inclined to research. They are available through http://www.abhilekh-patal.in and require free registration. Many documents are yet to be digitized and there is an option to pay for priority digitization after which the digitized contents become readily available (very similar to the French Digital Library http://gallica.bnf.fr/) Because of the understandable size of the contents and limitations of personnel, it appears that the metadata is often defective or in need of work. The content has been OCR-ed but with serious issues which make discovering relevant content a matter of requiring some search-engine-fu and even pure luck while browsing the contents. We can however improve the ease of discovery of relevant content.
What volunteer researchers can do * Search the contents for topics of your interest - if you find something relevant - you can cite it using cite web (a custom wrapper for the Archives may be desirable) * You can add links to the material on the relevant pages - as external links - perhaps future researchers will make a more careful examination and use it for referencing * Include in the edit comment - a suitable #tag - just so that others can find the archival research of colleagues via https://tools.wmflabs.org/hashtags/- for now I have been using #NAI but alternatives can be considered * Some of the files contain interesting attachments or portions - signatures of notable persons - photos or more - to give an example - a file discussing the proscription of a newspaper / magazine for carrying certain content will include a copy of the newspaper / magazine - these can* - if they are identified as being in the public domain* - be extracted and archived - possibly on the Internet Archive <https://www.archive.org> or to Commons <https://commons.wikimedia.org>. (these may however require some web tricks, PDF-hacks, and tools) Partnerships with the National Archives may also be possible in future. Interesting content discoveries and research stories are welcome also on the Facebook group - Open Research India https://www.facebook.com/groups/412404838856872 best wishes Shyamal https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Shyamal/India_resources
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