The ded­i­cated band of con­ser­va­tion­ists of the Pan­jab Dig­i­tal Li­brary dig­i­tized 44164 pages, as against their own tar­get of 35000 pages. The en­thu­si­as­tic team is set­ting new bench­marks for big­ger chal­lenges ahead.

In an ex­tended daily sched­ule of 12 hours, five mo­ti­vated teams of the Pun­jab Dig­i­tal Li­brary zeal­ously worked to dig­i­tize 35000 pages to com­mem­o­rate 35 years of the loss of the Sikh Ref­er­ence Li­brary in June 1984.

De­spite all odds of power out­ages, se­ri­ous sud­den ill­ness of the Pro­ject Man­ager, their zeal know­ing no bounds, every­one chased one pro­ject af­ter an­other at five dif­fer­ent lo­ca­tions to dig­i­tize books, cor­re­spon­dence, maps, 19th-cen­tury man­u­scripts, early 20th cen­tury books, Khalsa Dar­bar Records, Kalsia Dar­bar Records and more.

Since 2003, the Pan­jab Dig­i­tal Li­brary has so far dig­i­tized over 20 mil­lion pages, thus pre­serv­ing and pro­tect­ing in­valu­able her­itage and legacy.

“The day­break brought not so en­cour­ag­ing news of our pro­ject man­ager get­ting ex­tremely sick, and that he had to be hos­pi­tal­ized the pre­vi­ous night. Five team-leads that were sup­posed to work un­der him still de­cided to go ahead with the plan. Yet with the grace of Guru Sahib, we have ac­com­plished our tar­get,” said Davin­der Pal Singh, founder-di­rec­tor of Pan­jab Dig­i­tal Li­brary.

“It was an over­whelm­ing ex­pe­ri­ence to see the teams con­tinue dig­i­tiz­ing even af­ter they were in­formed that the tar­get was met. Fi­nally, when the work was stopped at 8 pm, the fi­nal tally stood at 44,164. Tar­get was not only met, but ex­ceeded by quite a mar­gin.”

Pan­jab Dig­i­tal Li­brary to dig­i­tize 35,000 pages to­day

Drenched in sweat due to the un­kind weather and the power out­ages, the team worked with some di­vine mo­ti­va­tional force. “Some­thing from within mo­ti­vated us to push fur­ther and test our lim­its. It was merely a dry run, yet an im­por­tant one, as it told us if we would be able to hold true the promise made to our own self. For it was a run up to a big plan and a big­ger chal­lenge,” said Davin­der Pal Singh.

The loss of the past can­not be re­trieved but what we have can be saved and what is go­ing to come will re­main with the hope that pre­serv­ing her­itage will be a rou­tine, not a priv­i­lege or a knee-jerk re­ac­tion nor even a mis­sion to be taken up af­ter a sub­stan­tial loss. With Pan­jab Dig­i­tal Li­brary at hand, this will not be dif­fi­cult to achieve.