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The
Archives of Indian Labour was set up in July, 1998 as a
collaborative project of V.V. Giri National Labour
Institute and the Association of Indian Labour Historians.
The Archives of Indian Labour is dedicated to the cause of
preserving and making accessible the fast depleting
documents on the working class with the belief that,
"Archive
is to society what memory is to human beings"
The
Archives was instituted in order to address the urgent
need for preservation of rapidly decaying documents and
material on labour and to provide for greater public
access to the same. It has long been felt that documents
and data on Indian Labour now and in the past, are being
irretrievably lost.
This
was primarily due to neglect and lack of an organised
initiative to preserve these documents in India. Hence to
overcome this lacuna of adequate documentation of the life
and labour of the working class, the Archives of Indian
Labour was constituted with the long-term objective to act
as a specialised repository of records and voices of the
workers, and contain textual, visual and oral records on
labour in India.
The
archive, apart from being a repository of sources and
documents also builds collections and initiates research
in the field of labour history. The collections are
generated through projects commissioned at the programme
and institutional documents donated by various
organisations. Documents related to labour movement
(generated by workers' organisations, state and business
enterprises) are preserved at the archive, in addition to
personal narratives, memoirs and video and audio material.
The archives combine this effort with an effective public
dissemination system of which the offline and on-line
access to the digital archives is a major component.
Seminars, working papers, film shows, and publications
ensure effective ways of disseminating information
generated by the archives and other research programmes.
The core activities of the archive are, thus:
The
unique features of the Archives are:
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Full-fledged
digital structure: The documents and material on
labour related issues are stored and made available in
digital form. This is the first fully digital archives
in the country and aspires to be the prime repository
of labour related records.
-
Integrated
Multimedia Storage and Retrieval System: The Archives
is enabled to store records and material in different
media formats- such as printed material, audio, video
and digital forms and provide access to these through
an integrated delivery system.
-
Enhanced
Public Access: Digital access system installed at the
Archives enables fast and meaningful delivery of
documents through different access modes- such as
offline networked PCs at the Archives, through CDs,
and now over the World Wide Web. This enables a far
greater access directly to the documents right to the
level of page of a document or a tagged audio and
video clip than a traditional archival system. A much
wider public now can have access to basic information
on condition of labour over time.
-
Integration
of historical and contemporary records: The digital
archives enables simultaneous access to records of
both historical and contemporary period. Organised
around special collections, this provides both
historical depth to contemporary issues and situates
historical changes from a contemporary perspective.
-
Focus
on Records of the Unorganised sector labour: The
archive has through special collections focused on the
activities of the workers of the unrecorded sector. A
large number of interviews of workers and labour
activists and documents of labour movement in the
sector have been stored and can be accessed.
In
total 9 special collections comprising 1.00,000 printed
pages, 400 hours of taped interviews are stored in digital
form. In addition several special reports and articles on
labour history of India, a detailed inventory of material
and sources on labour history and papers on technical
aspects of digital archiving are included in the online
version of the Archives of Indian Labour.
People
at the Archive
Honorary
Visiting Faculty
Prof.
S. Bhattacharya,
Former
Vice-Chancellor, Visva Bharati University
Formerly
of Center for Historical Studies, JNU
Coordinator
Shri
Babu P. Remesh
Associate
Fellow
V.
V. Giri National Labour Institute, NOIDA
Joint
Advisory Committee
Chairman
Prof.
S. Bhattacharya,
Former
Vice-Chancellor, Visva Bharati University
Formerly
of Center for Historical Studies, JNU
Co-Chairman
Director,
V. V Giri National Labour Institute
Members
Prof.
Sumit Sarkar, Delhi University
Prof.
Madhvan K. Palat, JNU
Dr.
Ravi Vasudevan, Center for Study of Developing Society,
New Delhi
Dr.Shitla
Prasad, Director General, National Archives of India
Dr.
Prabhu P. Mohapotra, Reader, Department of History,
Delhi University
Dr.
Rana P. Behal, Delhi University
Dr.
Indu Agnihotri, Faculty, Center for Women Development
Studies, New Delhi.
Dr.
S. K. Sasikumar, Fellow, VVGNLI
Shri
Babu P. Remesh (Coordinator, ILHRP), Associate
Fellow, VVGNLI
Digitisation
Team
Shri
Kamlendra Prasad Singh
Shri
Deepak Sundriyal
Shri
Rajesh Kumar
Shri
Nawab Wahabul Haque
Shri
S. P. Sharma
Greenstone:
The digitisation process involved incorporating and
developing Greenstone, an Open Source Library application,
within the archive. Features like automated hyper linking
and metadata generation were used efficiently to activate
the archive both in terms of form and content and thereby,
not limiting the endeavour to being just a mere library
collection of material.
You
Can Help Us
Archives
of Indian Labour preserves any kind of resources on issues
related to labour, including:
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Personal
Correspondence and Biographical Material of Labour
Leaders
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Documents
of Trade Unions
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Journals
and Newspapers Addressing the Labouring Poor
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Pamphlets,
Leaflets and Posters Issued by Trade Unions
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Relevant
Papers of Employments' Organisations
-
Relevant
Documents of Business Corporations
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Oral
Testimonies, Personal Narratives of Participants in
Labour Struggles
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Photographs,
Video Tapes and Films on and of Labour
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Work
Songs and Other Similar Material of Workers' Culture
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Trial
Proceedings in Courts of Law
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Records
of Individual and Collective Labour Disputes
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Papers
on International Working Class Bodies
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Records
of the Ministry of Labour, National Commissions on
Labour and other Government Agencies
The
prospective social partners, in building up the archive,
include:
You
could help us by contributing valuable data to the
Archives of Indian Labour. Please feel free to contact us
at:
Archives
of Indian Labour
Integrated Labour History Research Programme
V.V.Giri National Labour Institute
Sector 24, NOIDA
Uttar Pradesh, PIN: 201 301
Tele:
91-120-2411469
Fax: 91-120-2411538
(from Delhi, prefix 91)
shram24@del3.vsnl.net.in
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