Going through old textbooks with their yellowed, dog-eared pages and scribbled margins brings with it a rush of nostalgia. Stories, poems, tales of battles, and the struggle for Independence all came alive in those pages. Now, there is another chance to browse through the textbooks that one may have left behind in the journey of life, that too from the comforts of home.
A digital repository of old textbooks has been unveiled at the State Council of Educational Research and Training (SCERT).
The digitised versions of the old textbooks have been inaugurated by Minister for General Education V. Sivankutty, made available on https://textbooksarchives.scert.kerala.gov.in on Saturday.
The archives are also attached to the SCERT library that boasts of 80,000 books, national and international journals, and an online database. The archives have textbooks published by the General Education department and older books which were in print prior to its formation.
Books from a century ago
The digital archives are home to 1,258 textbooks of classes I to XII, which comes to 1.5 lakh digitised pages. These books can be accessed from anywhere in the world, downloaded and printed too.
The oldest textbook in this repository dates back to 1896.
There are textbooks published in the pre-Independence period. For instance, Malayalam textbooks for class III that were in use in 1902 and 1903 are available in the archive, as well as one for class V from 1932.
Textbooks from the post-Independence period – written by individuals and printed by private publishers – too are available. However, further research is needed to determine how these books were used, SCERT Director Jayaprakash R.K. said.
More to go
This is only the first phase of the textbook digitisation process that was completed in a year.
There are textbooks missing from the SCERT archives. The SCERT is hopeful that once the archives gain popularity, they will be able to get their hands on the missing volumes too and have a complete archive ready.
Mr. Sivankutty said the digital archives are a rare asset for the General Education department. If these textbooks had not been digitised and preserved, they would have been lost forever. This would be useful to researchers, students, teachers, and education activists, the Minister said.
The digital archives have been readied at a time when the State has brought out a new set of textbooks as part of revision of the school curriculum, taken up after a gap of a decade.
