30th Foundation Day Celebrations of Tata Central Archives

TATA Central Archives (TCA) celebrated its 30^th Foundation Day on January 7, 2021.

Since 2020, apart from the normal celebrations, TCA celebrates its Foundation Day with a purpose - enhancing knowledge in the field of archives.

In keeping with this tradition, a webinar was organised as a closed-door event with invites being sent to special guests, dignitaries, professionals from the field of archives. The response was encouraging.

The topic of this webinar was “The New Normal In The Field Of Archives - Best Practices and the Roadmap Ahead”.

The guest speaker was Dr. Sanjay Garg, well known author, academician, researcher and Director of the Swami Vivekananda Cultural Centre at Nur Sultan in Kazakhstan. Prior to this, he also served as the Deputy Director of the National Archives of India.

The proceedings of the webinar were conducted by Ms. Shobha Ramesh. She welcomed the guests and spoke about impact of the pandemic not only on the world economies at large but also its effect on business and archival services and the relevance of the topic in helping archives on the way forward.

T.R. Doongaji, Honorary Advisor, TCA, shared some of his insights and added that it would be good, as part of the normal practices, if professionals in this field from all over could share their knowledge and expertise on a regular basis.

Dr. Sanjay Garg made a formal presentation where he explained how the archives worldwide had met the challenge of the pandemic. Going forward, he felt, that digitisation of records and the proper management of the same would be a key enabler to lead this business. He spoke about harnessing the potential of new technologies to enhance users and visitors experience using Virtual Reality (VR) and Augmented Reality (AR) and mobile interface, the role of social media in sharing various formats of archival material. Content and timeliness would be of paramount importance he said and conducting various virtual tours and exhibitions would be the order of the day. He also said that routine work of archives could be technologically driven to ensure a seamless workflow.

He stated that a time has come when we need to move away from paper and store records in an electronic format. Citing various examples and the best practices to be followed he said that the very nature of the Coronavirus and the unknown features of the same made it important to gather information to study which would be precious archival literature for the future.

Selection of records and a formal Record Management Policy, copyright issues, placement of records as legal evidence, description of records and how businesses can make use of these are some essential points that he touched upon.

This was followed by a Question and Answer session where all questions were answered in detail by Dr. Garg.

R.P. Narla, Archivist, TCA thanked Dr. Garg and all the guests for making the event a grand success.