Digitisation holds the key to keep books alive forever and make them accessible for generations, speakers felt at the closing ceremony of the 14th annual Tirupati Book Festival, organised by Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan, at SV High School grounds here on Sunday.
A. Raghurama Raju, professor of philosophy at Indian Institute of Technology-Tirupati (IITT) said that only a third of literary content was available in the form of published books, while the rest continued to remain on palm leaf manuscripts and on copper plates.
New projects
Even among the published books, a mere 40% was available as digital content and on online medium, he said, indicating that much needed to be done in future in this regard. He also referred to a project undertaken by IIT Tirupati on developing an application downloadable on smartphones that could capture images of Telugu literary content and electronically archive it on its server, capturing the name of the uploader.
Prof. Raju said it would enable people having rare books, not available in stores, to share their content digitally so as to make it accessible to readers across the globe. “Centuries-old books can be recorded and archived by this application,” he added.
SVIMS Director and Vice-Chancellor B. Vengamma, who is also a professor or neurology, explained that book-reading habit would enhance the ability to read, concentrate and retain the content.
