Academics and researches of all ages and professions will now have easy access to historical documents by the click of a button.
Speaking at the launch of the Memory of the World website at the Southern Cross Hotel, the Chairperson for the National Commission for Unesco’s Communication and Information Committee, Mr Jim Bently said today’s launch is a milestone achievement in firstly preserving and documenting historical data that is now available.
“The whole idea behind the memory of the world programme is to increase awareness of the national heritage documents and the three main objectives to the Memory of the World programme is to facilitate further preservation by most appropriate techniques of the worlds documentary heritage, to assist universal access to documentary heritage and to increase awareness world wide of the existence and significance of documentary heritage,” he said.
Mr Bently added that making materials accessible to people via the internet was one of the important factors that was looked into considering its reach both locally and internationally.
Moreover, chairman for the National Memory of the World Committee and Acting Deputy Secretary for Information Mr Setareki Tale said the importance of the memory of the world website is to ensure that Fiji’s significant documentaries are inscribed in the international memory of the world register at the Unesco office in Paris as well as the Asia-Pacific register in Canberra, Australia.
“The whole intention is to maximize access to what we have and showcase our community and nation, the memory of the world is not limited to institutional memory it is limited to any memory that Fiji holds dear to our hearts.
“For example a class of records we are looking at now will be added to the register are the church records which we think form a vital component of our collective memory as a nation,we will recall that it was the missionaries that established the formal record keeping in our communities so without that history our history as a nation is never complete,”he said.
For more information on the Memory of the World website log on to http://www.fijimemory .org.fj