VIJAYAWADA: The Andhra Pradesh Press Academy intends to revive its website and upload about 16 lakh pages of old newspapers and periodicals that have already been digitised.

Academy chairman Devulapalli Amar said at a press conference here on Monday that the academy had secured these old newspapers and periodicals dating back to last 100 years from reputed libraries in Vetapalem and Rajahmundry besides the State Archives. The digitised pages, mainly of non-dailies, were already stored in compact discs, but the arduous task of indexing these pages was yet to be taken up. "Even if these pages are uploaded and made available on our website, it would be difficult to locate the required information without an index. Therefore, we're first trying to prepare an index of these pages," Mr. Amar said.

The Press Academy chairman said digitisation of old dailies would be taken up now following Chief Minister Y.S. Rajasekhara Reddy's assurance to the academy to fund the programme.

Mr. Amar said the Academy had taken up the task of compiling history of reputed newspapers, and `Andhra Patrika' founded by Kasinathuni Nageswara Rao was first one to be covered under this programme. It would now be taken up in case of `Golkonda Patrika' edited by Suravaram Pratapa Reddy.

The chairman said that deliberations of national seminar on `Lakshman Rekha for the media,' conducted by the Academy in Hyderabad on June 1 this year, were compiled for larger use of journalists.

Need for self-restraint

Mr. Amar presided over a media workshop on the module prepared by the academy for journalists on the Right to Information Act. Journalists from various news organisations attended the workshop and expressed their views on the usefulness of the Act to them.

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