PJSC Tatneft : TATNEFT Will Indulge in the Digitization of Ancient Manuscripts and Books

The Company together with the Institute of History named after Sh. Mardzhani of the Academy of Science of Tatarstan and the Kazan Federal University will be involved on the first stage of a large-scale project of digitizing and cataloging materials from the Eastern Sector of the Scientific Library of the KFU named after Lobachevsky.

There are about 15 thousand manuscripts and 15 thousand printed books in Arabic script retained at the Kazan University. The gallery includes several inestimable private collections of prominent Tatar culture figures: Galimzhan Barudi, Sayyid Vaidi, Najip Tyuntyari, Khasan-Gata Gabashi. There are also at the university there are books collected during expeditions to the places of the Tatars residence from the Nizhny Novgorod region to Irkutsk. Many of them have no analogues in Russia.

In accordance with the Project's Roadmap TATNEFT will develop the software for supporting the database and creating a website where everyone can get acquainted with the digitized materials.

The Company will also provide special scanners and a server for storing the information: given the number of the books and manuscripts the scanning process will take at least three years, and the total volume of archives from this collection alone can reach 800 terabytes.

As the digitization proceeds, the staff of the Institute of History n.a. Marjani of the Academy of Science of Tatarstan will deal with attribution and description of the materials in the database.

TATNEFT has already delivered the first two out of 10 scanners planned for use and the procedure for digitizing the archives has been determined. The first Arabic-language manuscripts from the collection will be scanned in September.

The materials from the Eastern Sector of KFU are only the first stage of the large-scale work that TATNEFT has planned to implement. the Company expects to digitize other archives of manuscripts and books in the future, and make them available to a wide range of readers.

Nail Maganov, General Director of PJSC TATNEFT:

'We our origins with great care, because it is very important to preserve history and traditions for the upbringing of a worthy future generation. And the project to digitize old books and manuscripts is our next serious step in this direction.

TATNEFT possesses broad technical capabilities and competencies that will allow us to preserve inestimable manuscripts and books and make them available to everyone'.