A palm-leaf manuscripts museum being set up at the Archives department’s Central Archives here will be opened soon, Minister for Archives Ahammad Devarkovil has said.

He was speaking after inaugurating the Archives department’s projects for scientific conservation of records and preparation of reference media here on Wednesday.

The Archives department has a rich collection of over 1 crore palm-leaf manuscripts. The department, in association with the nodal agency for museums Kerala – Museum of History and Heritage, was establishing the palm-leaf manuscripts museum to display these rare records and communicate their importance to the public, the Minister said.

The International Archives and Heritage Centre was being set up by the department in association with the University of Kerala on 1 acre of land given on lease on the Karyavattom campus for study and research of archives, he said. The project was being implemented by the Kerala – Museum of History and Heritage and promised to benefit students and researchers of archives.

Digitisation of records was also under way to make these available online to researchers, Mr. Devarkovil said.

He underlined the urgent need for scientific conservation of the records and documents with the department so that they did not suffer the ravages of time and could be made available to researchers, historians, and the public. Similarly, to improve access to these old records for effective use by researchers and students, there was need to prepare a reference media for them. To realise this objective, a physical verification indexing project had been devised by the department. Indexing of all records of the department will help improve researchers’ access to these, the Minister said.

V.K. Prasanth, MLA, presided over the function. Archives Director J. Rejikumar, Kerala Museum executive director R. Chandranpillai, Archaeology Director E. Dinesan, Archives Assistant Director P. Biju, and Vyloppilly Samskrithi Bhavan member secretary P.S. Priydarsan spoke.