The Irkutsk Regional State Archive received modern equipment for digitizing and restoring documents, a large format scanner, an 11 terabyte server and other equipment. Over the next two years, they plan to digitize the most valuable collections, 18 thousand storage units, including 17th century documents and unique archives of Irkutsk governors general.
In September 2012, the state archive received a large-format scanner worth more than 4 million rubles, a server designed to store 11 terabytes of information was purchased, as well as computers and devices for document restoration. In 2013, equipment for microfilming is expected to arrive — the transfer of digitized documents onto transparent film, as well as another A2-format scanner. The institution also plans to equip the reading room with computers.As Sergei Ovchinnikov noted, the archive staff has been tasked with converting the most valuable documents into electronic form over the next two years, or 18,000 storage units. One storage unit amounts to an average of 250 standard pages. Since last September, 21,225 standard pages, or 85 storage units, have been scanned. The plan for this year is 289,000 pages.
The head of the agency emphasized that in total, the GAIO today stores about 1 million documents. The oldest documents date back to 1650, when the Irkutsk ostrog had not yet been founded. In addition, GAIO today has the most complete collection of documents from the office of the Irkutsk governor-general, and the fonds of the Amur governor-general are also kept here.
Based on materials from the press service of the Governor of the Irkutsk Region and the Government of the Irkutsk Region