Chandamama, the multilingual children‘s magazine, is digitizing its archives.
According to Chandamama which has been in operation for the past 60 years, there has been a steady demand for back issues.
The Sri Venkateswara Digital Library, Tirupati, which is affiliated to the Digital Library of India, a consortium of Carnegie Mellon University of the USA and the Ministry of Information Technology has taken the responsibility to digitize all the content of Chandamama.
(A bulk of spare copies were lost in the cyclone that hit Chennai in 1977)
Speaking to AnimationXpress.com, Chandamama MD and Editor, B.Vishwanatha Reddi shared, “The objective is to preserve the content of 60 years for the benefit of the future generations, to throw open the content in our archives accessible to our readers, and also to make a humble entry to the world of e-publishing”.
“A total of 6,370 issues in all 13 languages has been put together, each issue averaging 64 pages. This is for the period July 1947 to December 2006” he added.
The digital content of Chandamama would be available through Chandamama‘s website www.chandamama.org. Content is accessible to the readers by paying a nominal fee.
“By digitizing our content, we are entering the digital era through this venture. We will soon test its waters in most other popular electronic mediums, including gaming, etc, in the coming months. We are also intended to digitize the forthcoming issues of Chandamama but that will be our inhouse production and will be made available by July 2007 or by year end as part of the 60th anniversary celebration” Reddi concluded.