Now, Fergusson’s records available at a mouse click

Soon, official records of all ex-students of the 125-year-old Fergusson College, right from Veer Savarkar and Dhondo Keshav Karve to the present batches, will be available at the click of a mouse.

Apart from that, important documents chronicling the tenure of all staff members, including illustrious names like Wrangler Paranjpe and Gopal Krishna Gokhale, will also be digitised as a part of a mega-digitisation project being undertaken by the college. The work is expected to start by February.

“When we started the work of documenting the college’s history, we realised that some of our oldest documents dating as far back as 1884 — when the Deccan Education Society (DES) was formed — were under threat from moisture and termites,” said RG Pardeshi, principal, Fergusson College.

That is when the authorities decided to undertake the digitisation project. The documents to be digitised include all student records such as birth certificates and address proof certificates, marksheets, and admission and transfer certificates.

The college was established in 1885 by the founders of the DES, namely, Vishnushastri Chiplunkar, Lokmanya Bal Gangadhar Tilak, Gopal Ganesh Agarkar, Mahadev Ballal Namjoshi and Vaman Shivram Apte.

Vice-principal Nitin Kulkarni said that all records relating to the teaching staff will also be digitised. “There are several speeches made by Wrangler Paranjpe, Gopal Krishna Gokhale, Ram Takawale among others. All of these will also be preserved,” said Kulkarni.

On an average, around 4,000 to 5,000 students study in the college every year. Lakhs of books in the Bai Jerbai Wadia library will also be covered under this project. In addition, old records of the DES will be digitised.

A Pune-based company will undertake this project. The digitisation will be carried out one decade at a time starting from the 21st century going back into the 20th, and finally, the 19th century.
Apart from the documents and books, a visitor’s book that has comments by Nobel laureate CV Raman and former prime minister Rajiv Gandhi, will also be included in the project, said Pardeshi.