The National Library of Tunis is digitizing its collection of nearly 16,000 foreign newspapers which include around forty titles, some dating from the 19ᵉ century. The state of some deteriorated newspapers…

Reportage

In Tunisia, the digitization of newspapers from the National Library to open up the heritage

Hajer Sahli, Director of Collections at the National Library of Tunis, shows a copy of the Tunisian Charivari newspaper.

Text by: RFI Follow

3 mins

The National Library of Tunis is digitizing its collection of nearly 16,000 foreign newspapers, which include around forty titles, some dating from the 19th century.

The condition of some logs deteriorated over time requires speeding up the process.

A long-term project for the library which wants to promote this heritage testifying to the cultural richness of the country.

In the basement of the national library, nearly 2,000 square meters are devoted to a collection of manuscripts and newspapers.

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With our correspondent in Tunis

Lilia Blaise

Hajer Sahli, director of collections, takes us to see the archives of foreign newspapers.

“

For me, this is a national project to highlight this background, identify it, present it to Tunisians.

The section is very varied, nearly fifty magazines in French are humorous newspapers dating from the era of the Protectorate, and there are as many in Arabic.

Along the coasts, Hajer Sahli also makes us discover the publications.

“

The Union is Italian, that's very pretty, but also very fragile.
It is a humorous magazine that dates from the 19ᵉ century

”.

Once digitized, the originals are no longer manipulated in order to protect them.

According to the director of the library, Raja Ben Slama, it is also a question of preserving a multicultural heritage which also testifies to the presence of the Jewish community in the country.

“

I call for another philosophy of heritage and heritage.
I find that these communities who left existed and continue to exist in a certain way through these documents

, ”she said at the microphone of RFI.

Hajer Sahli, Director of Collections at the National Library of Tunis, in the middle of the archives.

Thanks to a partnership with the BNF, Bibliothèque François Mitterrand, in France, the library also exchanges its digitizations and collects, at the same time, archives of Tunisian publications, also digitized in France.

Make the archives accessible to all

For the professor of contemporary history, Kmar Bendana, the establishment of this digital fund goes beyond the preservation of a multicultural heritage, it is also a question of making precious documents accessible to researchers and academics for their studies.

“

It's a cultural economy that involves upstream ramifications, Prosper printers, newsagents, active readers, so a whole industry that's very lively.
And newspapers, journals, and magazines precisely constitute the traces of a diversified, animated, nourished cultural life, of which we have not sufficiently made the history, and that is why the enterprise of the Library national is both a surprise for us, because we will unite a bit all this extremely dense history over several decades
, ”

explains Kmar Bendana.

It is also an initiative for the future, and it opens for us, for Tunisia, for researchers, the doors of a scientific exploitation which is necessary because it is an archive today which becomes within the reach of all.

In Tunisia, the digitization of newspapers from the National Library to open up the heritage

In Tunisia, the digitization of newspapers from the National Library to open up the heritage

Make the archives accessible to all

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