The Reserve Bank of India is planning to digitize some 1.5 lakh pages of its old records and make these records available online. The central bank has floated a tender for this purpose. The archived records of the Reserve Bank of India publications are in the form of books, bound volumes and accession registers. The objective is to digitize the documents using state-of -the-art scanning and meta-tagging methodologies and subsequent archival of the same with robust online search and query facilities. RBI said the documents identified for scanning are ‘old, delicate, fragile and brittle’ and need sophisticated handling techniques. Generally, binding is not allowed to be taken out as it may damage the documents. However, in some cases where it is absolutely necessary, due care should be taken to remove the binding with prior permission of the designated officer. The central bank is undertaking the work of digitisation of old documents for the purpose of conservation and restoration of records available on paper.
