Parsiana digital archives

For many years we harbored a desire to digitally preserve all the issues of Parsiana and to offer them to the public. When businessman and former president of the Madras Parsi Association Darius Bahadurji wrote to us suggesting the idea and offering to help fund the effort, we replied that the amount involved would be prohibitive and the time taken exceedingly lengthy. The archives would span 40 years, from 1965 to 2005 (the first two issues of November and December 1964 are not with us). Could a small organization like ours ever succeed in such a venture, we wondered!

But after scouting around and talking to people we found that software for transferring scanned images into text could be available at a reasonable cost.

Bahadurji came forth with a generous donation to get us started. This is not the first time he has helped. On earlier occasions he financed the purchase of a laser printer (when the prices were substantially higher than today), a copying-cum-printing-scanning-fax machine and expensive publishing software.

With the assistance of Fortune Informatics Limited of Hyderabad we labored on the project for two years, being gently nudged along by Bahadurji and his associate Rohinton Daroga who earlier worked with us. Whenever we slowed down the pace of the project they goaded us on until we were ready with the finished product.

It’s a fine example of how philanthropy works, not only by giving but by nurturing as well.

P.S. There are certain glitches in the optical recognition software as the earlier issues of Parsiana from 1965 to 1973, were unevenly printed. But we felt we should go ahead despite this shortcoming as the data and information of 40 years would compensate for any lacunas.