On a mission to restore old documents

THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: With an aim to restore the historical documents, books, manuscripts, pamphlets and other important documents kept at offices of flood-hit areas, the state archives department has launched a mobile conservation clinic.
The clinic that targets public as well as government offices in flood-affected areas, was officially flagged off by archives minister Ramachandran Kadanannapally here last week.

As many as 20 conservation experts and one conservation officer of the archives department will be part of the mobile clinic that will visit public institutions such as libraries and sub-registrar offices and collect important documents such as land documents, heritage documents, century old rare-historical books, and archival material including palm-leaf manuscripts damaged in the calamity.

On last Saturday the team had visited Chennamangalam, Paravur- one of the worst flood affected areas of Ernakulum to restore the damaged books kept on the Nair Samajam Library, which was totally inundated. The team led by conservation officer collected the damaged books and took them to the conservation lab of archives directorate for drying process. The team had also visited Perunnadu sub-registrar office located at Ranni, which had reported huge damage to the records.

“As water got into the record rooms of Perunnadu sub-registrar office, all the valuable documents including land documents, stamp papers, other certificates and registration documents were soiled. Thus we got calls from the authority to undertake restoration process. We will do whatever is possible to restore the items. The collected documents will undergo drying process as a preliminary step. It is very hard to restore land documents as ink pens were used in them. In order to fix it, we will dry the documents and will protect them through lamination process,” said Shibu Narayan, assistant archives superintendent.

Narayan added that if the officials are willing to handover the important office records – the team will take the documents to the conservation lab at the headquarters. In other cases, the mobile unit will undertake necessary steps to restore them.