This is an excellent proposal. The stock of images that are held by the public in Goa (and about Goa) must be enormous and tremendously valuable as a social, historical and cultural resource. I'd like to add to Cecil's note to suggest the inclusion of one category that is at least as important as photographic images and illustrations, and that is documents.
About document conservation and restoration, and digital preservation in general, the tendency in India appears to be to ignore this vital resource. It was only three or four months ago that I read about a national manuscripts committe, or some such group, that has been formed presumably under the Ministry of Culture to examine what can be done to preserve this heritage.
India has quite possibly the world's largest holdings of documents written on traditional material like palm leaf, which was and continues to be used extensively in places like Orissa. 'Patta chitra' is the generic term given to drawings on this material, which was loosely bound into books. I was appalled, about three years ago when writing a paper on the subject, to find that not only are many collections not being preserved, but there exist few indices of even what has been collected and where these are held.
That digital preservation - following restoration and conservation of archival textual material - is sorely needed in Goa is I think apparent to anyone who has visited the archives, or even the Central Library's rare books section. I understand that a few years ago the Fundação Oriente had offered to put in place the technology that was needed for just such a task for the Central Library, but that their offer was rejected for reasons that seem unclear.
Together with images and audio-visual, textual material is invaluable to understanding such a many-layered culture. I would suggest that a variety of documents present themselves as source material - correspondence, titles and deeds, newspaper clippings tucked away in albums, old advertisements, pamphlets and flyers, souvenirs of events and festivals, certificates, etc. No doubt just as with images, all sorts of text-based material will be found to hold some significance for those who have preserved them. If kept well these can also be converted to electronically readable formats via OCR software.
Regards,
Rahul
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