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Oman Donates Equipment for Records Preservation
[December 17, 2013]

Oman Donates Equipment for Records Preservation


(AllAfrica Via Acquire Media NewsEdge) THE government of the Sultanate of Oman has donated modern equipment worth more than a hundred thousand dollars to the Ministry of Public Service Management's Records and Archives Department.

Receiving the equipment, Director of Records and National Archives, Mr Charles Magaya, said, "The Government of the Sultanate of Oman has supplied two heavy duty scanners with high resolution, three laptops, two servers and a back-up hard disk.



Other additional equipment will be brought early next month." The donation by the government of Oman was in fulfilment of a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) between the two governments signed in October 2012 in respect of strengthening collaborations in the fields of documentation, said Permanent Secretary in the President's Office (Public Service Management), Mr George Yambesi.

An Oman expert with the Research Studies, National Records and Archives Authority, Dr Wafik Kelliny said the donation was part of their implementation of the MoU.


The programme includes the training of Tanzanian staff on the use of the equipment by Oman experts, while some Tanzanian officials will go to Oman to learn how to store, preserve and maintain historical data, Dr Wafik Kelliny said.

The Department of Records and National Archives has the duty of preserving the nation's archives from 1918 during the German and British rule to the present, said Mr Magaya.

Elaborating, he said the paradigm shift from paper base to digital will ease the process of storing information from the time collected up to 30 years when the information will be accessible to the public, adding that the division currently had about 100,000,000 stored records.

The collection ranges from German records (about 8,000 files) which are in German language, over 30,000 files pertaining to the British colonial period, provincial and district administrative archives, church archives and private papers and official gazettes.

The equipment supplied will facilitate proper preservation and conservation of national archives and records dating back to the 18th century, added Mr Yambesi.

He said the distribution and viewing of historical records will be enhanced, because the public will be able to view them by computers, Mr Yambesi added.

The division has managed to collect both colonial and contemporary records from various ministries and departments which are well preserved and listed and open to the public.

Copyright Tanzania Daily News. Distributed by AllAfrica Global Media (allAfrica.com).

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