The Hindu : Tamil Nadu / Chennai News : Keeping the ‘mirror to past’ intact

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Friday, Oct 31, 2008
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Tamil Nadu

Tamil Nadu - Chennai

Keeping the ‘mirror to past’ intact

Staff Reporter

Photo: S.S.Kumar

Preserving past: Historian S.Muthiah (centre) responds to a query from the audience at a meeting organised by ABS Chennai on Wednesday. Roja Muthiah Research Library director Sundar Ganesan (right) and ABS Chennai president P.M.Belliappa are in the picture.—

CHENNAI: Wedding invitations, film posters, newspaper clippings, songbooks and personal diaries. While these were worthless pieces of paper to some, in the hands of collector Roja Muthiah, they became of invaluable meaning for historians. From the 1950s to the 1980s, he collected more than 100,000 written materials.

“These sources are important for the reconstruction of history of common people,” director of the Roja Muthiah Research Library, Sundar Ganesan, said here on Wednesday.

In a talk organised by the Association of British Scholars (ABS), Chennai, Mr. Ganesan spoke about the importance of ‘Archiving Library Material and Modern Conservation Practices’. With an ABS Travel Grant, Mr. Ganesan recently received training at the British Library’s Conservation Centre, London.

“All latest techniques for conservation and preservation and a research and development centre are there. No chemicals are used. Instead temperature and other conditions are kept optimum and materials are monitored to keep insects away,” Mr.Ganesan explained.

Historian S.Muthiah emphasised the danger of chemicals, saying that the insecticide that Roja Muthiah used on his book shelves saved his collection, but also shortened the collector’s own life.

Praising the collection, Mr.Muthiah said: “His collection mirrors south Indian society, going back as far as the 1850s until the 1950s”. He also described the collection as one of the best accessible in India. “You can find all material easily, and if you don’t, I cannot think of a more helpful group of people than the staff here,” he said.

One problem the Roja Muthiah Research Library has is of inadequate space. Recently the University of Chicago, which bought the Roja Muthiah collection after the collector’s death, donated 30,000 books of its Tamil collection, but the books are still in boxes.

Other problems consist in the conservation area. “Much material that is best for conservation of paper, such as Japanese tissue, is not available in India, which makes it an expensive practise. Also, the tropical climate here makes conservation extra challenging,” Mr.Ganesan said.

He added that the Roja Muthiah Research Library would start a centre to research conservation methods for the South Asian climate. ABS Chennai president P. M. Belliappa spoke.

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