Kathmandu, December 19:

The Press Council Nepal has archived daily and weekly newspapers published between 1974 and 2005 in compact discs despite having inadequate human resources and insufficient budget.

Ram Sharan Bohara, supervisor of the CD-ROM preservation unit at the PCN, said, “The council has already archived the daily and weekly newspapers published during the three decades in CDs and preserved 178,000 pages in them.” He said the Press Council Nepal had also preserved a few daily tabloids in the CDs.

“We are also planning to prepare a computer programme which would facilitate researchers in searching desired articles,” Bohara told this daily today, adding, “We are doing research on this aspect.”

The newspaper digitisation project started in 2002 with an objective of digitally archiving newspapers published between 1974 and 2007. “Owing to the lack of budget, we don’t have enough human resource,” he said, adding, “Two staffers are working from 6 am to 7 pm to complete the project soon.”

One of the two scanners used for scanning the papers has stopped functioning, he lamented. “As soon as the scanner starts working, the archiving work will gain momentum.”

Rajendra Dahal, the president of Press Council Nepal, said, “Two more years would be required to complete the project as scanners are not functioning and we don’t have enough manpower.”

The Press Council Nepal said 600 newspapers are being published in the current fiscal.