February 15, 2019
KMC unveils online archive about Kolkata & its history
The mayor of Kolkata inaugurated the website of the Kolkata Municipal Corporation’s (KMC) archive on January 26. The website has been named www.kmcarchive.in.
While unveiling the website, the mayor also said that the KMC is the only municipal corporation in the country to have an archive of its own.
The website will be of immense benefit to those who want to pursue research activities about Kolkata and how it has evolved through the passage of time. It contains information about the mayors of the city since the civic body’s inception, their works for the development of the city, the similarity between the residences of the United Kingdom and Kolkata, how the city was founded and so on.
The website lists the documents available with the KMC. If somebody wants to have detailed information about any of those, the person would have to write an e-mail to kmcarchives@gmail.com, disclosing the purpose and whether the request is from a researcher or an individual, official or organisation, and any other relevant details. The full document(s) will be sent by mail by the municipal secretary.
The archive section of the KMC has set a target of uploading information about nearly one lakh subjects related to Kolkata on the website.
It may be mentioned that people from different parts of the world have a curiosity about Kolkata’s history and heritage. There have been instances of researchers from Boston, Cambridge, Oxford and other universities coming to the civic body’s archive section, seeking information about the city. Now they need not come physically, making their efforts much easier.
The archive of the KMC had started its journey on February 3, 2015. It has been named after scholar Amol Home, the first editor of the Calcutta Municipal Gazette, the publication of which started on November 15, 1924.
The archive contains documents, charts, maps, drawings and paintings of early Kolkata (or Calcutta, as it was then called), various articles like history books on Kolkata, photographs of persons and places of interest, newspapers, street lists (1889 – 2014), civic receptions, list of heritage buildings, etc.
Source: Millennium Post
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