Kolkata : Records of India’s diverse flora that exist in museum archives in India and London are all set to get digitised and made available electronically in a unique knowledge repatriation venture, reports IANS.
In a collaborative exercise between the Indian Museum, Botanical Survey of India (BSI) and the University of Sussex in Britain, officials are exploring the possibility of digital repatriation of facsimiles of Indian flora.
Digital repatriation refers to the return of culturally significant texts to their site of origin in digital form and has become an increasingly common means of cultural exchange.
“I am here in India to liase with the Botanical Survey of India and the Indian Museum about their collections of natural history (mainly botany) and see how we can rescue them, help digitise the collection of London’s Natural History Museum so that we can have some digital repatriation, so that we can merge these collections and help with new flora of India,” Vinita Damodaran, senior lecturer in history (International Development) at the University of Sussex, told IANS.
Damodaran, an authority on climate heritage and modern history of India, delivered a lecture on E.K. Janaki Ammal, the first Indian woman scientist to get a doctorate degree. She is also related to Ammal.
The project would involve copies in possession with the Indian Museum, BSI and London’s Natural History Museum (NHM).
