IT looked like a mission impossible; doc¬umenting one of the oldest and largest national archives worldwide, an institute that contains about 90 million mostly unclassified and defectively stored docu¬ments, the National Archive of Egypt “Dar at-Wathaek” that was founded in 1828 during the reign of Mohamed Ali Pasha.
The documents conserved at this place go back not only to the time of Mohamed Ali, but also to the Fatimid, Ayubid and Mamluk eras.
It all started five years ago with a let¬ter from the Minister of Culture to the Minister of Communications and Information Technology asking for the help of this dream to come true. A pilot project was launched and lasted a whole year to identify the size of the task and several experimentations were carried out on the digitization of some collections which finally lead to the initiation of a four-year project that is ending this week when the Prime Minister and the two ministers concerned will inaugurate it.
This gigantic project was cooperation between the two ministers and their insti¬tutes concerned, mainly “Dar AI¬Wathaek” or the National Archives head¬ed by Saber Arab and the Centre for Documentation of Cultural and. Natural Heritage (CULTNAT), in addition to sev¬eral companies that were in charge of the implementation part that involved about 2.000 people.
The National Archives has changed; it became physically organized, a complete record of the content of its file are digitalized and a sizable amount of its docu¬ments are scanned, the visitors and researchers have a computer hall for con¬sultation at the entrance of the building and they can also get information about the collection through the Internet web¬site: www.nationalarchives.gov.eg
Finally this week, the project was granted a pan-Arab award from the Arab Federation for Libraries and Information (AFLI) as the best project for the year 2009 and the deputy director of CULT¬NAT, Eglal Bahgat is at this moment in
Morocco to attend the general conference of AFLl and receive the award. This is a project that each and every Egyptian should really be proud of.
