Mobile digitization equipment
New center for culture out to collate Kurdistan’s dispersed cultural heritage
ERBIL – The Kurdistan Center for Arts and Culture, based in Erbil, has embarked on an ambitious project to digitize and make accessible the archives of Kurdistan, focusing on historical, cultural, and artistic documents. This initiative has been underway for the past year, culminating in the official launch of the center on May 27, 2024.
Fatih Rebar, the head of communications at the center, informed 964media that over the past year, they have collected more than a thousand books, journals, manuscripts, and photographs, all relating to Kurdistan. “Through this effort, we are showcasing our rich culture to the public,” he said.
Rebar described the innovative approach they’ve employed to gather these materials: “We have a van equipped with advanced scanners that travels around the various areas of Kurdistan. We have a rich culture that is dispersed, often due to war or other reasons. For example, we have ten manuscripts from one village and ten photos from another city. We are searching to find these manuscripts and books, then scan them.”
The goal of KCAC is to archive every book written about the Kurds and Kurdistan. The center also hosts a special section dedicated to translation works, emphasizing the global accessibility and understanding of Kurdish culture.
Rebar highlighted the scattered state of Kurdistan’s archival materials due to past circumstances, noting the absence of a central repository for these valuable resources until now. This digital archive aims to consolidate and preserve Kurdistan’s cultural heritage, making it available to researchers and the general public online.
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