The Nehru Memorial Museum & Library (NMML), one of the biggest repositories of books and periodicals in the country housed in the capital's Teen Murti complex, has taken up an ambitious project to develop what would be the country's first electronic media archive. While both Doordarshan and All India Radio have their own archives, there is no archive for electronic news encompassing various channels, even while newspapers and periodicals are getting methodically archived in more than one organisation countrywide. NMML director Mridula Mukherjee, who is spearheading the project, talks to Deccan Herald' s Utpal Borpujari on why there is the need for such an archive.Excerpts:
Can you explain the idea behind the move to set up the electronic media archive?
If you are looking for a newspaper of, say, January 14, 1932, you will get it either in NMML, the National Library or some other place. But if you are looking for the main news of Doordarshan of August 27, 2001, you will not get it anywhere for public access. There is no archive for electronic media news, and that is why the need was felt to set up one.
How will such an archive help people?
Even though public opinion is beingincreasingly modulated by television, there is no archive for anyone who wants to access them later. It's an information black hole that is being created.
It is about preservation of historical records based on audio-visual news. People will be able to use the archive for academic analysis. But we are archiving them only from the present times, and not going into the past bulletins.
Full interview here Deccan Herald
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