GEORGE TOWN, Aug 2 ― Much has been written about Penang over the years but all this information is spread all over the place in newspapers, magazines and books.
Soon though, this vast database of information will be digitised as part of an ambitious project to create a massive online archive of all things Penang.
Taking charge of the project, dubbed Penangpedia, is Think City chairman Datuk Anwar Fazal who wants to connect the whole of Penang in a way that has never been done before.
“This will become Penang's very own version of Wikipedia, everything you want to know about Penang is in there, every information will be in there,” he told Malay Mail Online in an interview recently.
The director and founder of Right Livelihood College said he is now working with Wawasan Open University (WOU) on the project with the support of Think City.
“We are going to start by digitising all the school magazines in the Penang Free School as a contribution to its 200th anniversary. We hope this will trigger later, a wave of similar projects with all the school libraries of Penang,” he said.
With the digitisation, this means a simple search on Google may bring up information such as the history of the diverse schools in Penang, the schools' alumni and even the class photos.
It may also include the treasure trove of articles written by teachers and students, he said.
Anwar said they are making preparations to apply to the British Museum for assistance in getting good digitising equipment and training for the project.
They will also be linking up with all local universities and archival institutions in new collaborative efforts as they already have some of the required facilities to do it.
“We hopefully will connect the whole of Penang in a way it was never connected before and it will be a new way to document Penang for the generation to come,” he said.
“The project will take time and it will depend on interest and resources. Think City will help in the startup and anchor it at the WOU, which is an outstanding online university and has the framework for hosting it,” he added.
The Penangpedia project will follow after the Visions of Penang online archives project by George Town World Heritage Inc (GTWHI) that was also supported by Think City.
Anwar said Penangpedia will be quite similar to Visions of Penang but they have yet to work out the format for it.
The Visions of Penang online archives, accessible on visionsofpenang.com.my, has collections of Penang-related documents such as the Kelly maps which are early survey maps of George Town and also The Light Letters Collection which is the correspondence between Sultan Abdullah Mukaram Shah and Francis Light.
