An­na-Lisa Paul

Se­nior Re­porter

an­nal­isa.paul@guardian.co.tt

The pub­lic can now ac­cess over 200 speech­es and oth­er writ­ings penned by the first Prime Min­is­ter of T&T, Dr Er­ic Williams, as part of a dig­i­tal­i­sa­tion project to pre­serve the coun­try’s lega­cy for fu­ture gen­er­a­tions.

In launch­ing the on­line Col­lec­tion of Speech­es by Dr Er­ic Williams at the Cen­tral Bank Au­di­to­ri­um, Port-of-Spain, on Thurs­day, Car­o­line Kan­galee said the labour of love had been 13 years in the mak­ing.

Kan­galee, the sys­tems li­brar­i­an at NALIS, was re­spon­si­ble for de­vel­op­ing the project pa­ra­me­ters, se­lect­ing in­ter­na­tion­al ICT bench­marks, procur­ing the soft­ware and ap­pro­pri­ate hard­ware; and train­ing the li­brary staff of the Min­istry of Plan­ning and De­vel­op­ment, who were re­spon­si­ble for scan­ning and com­pil­ing over two mil­lion pieces of cor­re­spon­dence.

De­liv­er­ing re­marks on the his­tor­i­cal launch, Williams’ daugh­ter, Er­i­ca Williams-Con­nell said, “It mat­ters not if you are an afi­ciona­do of Er­ic Williams, if you are his com­mit­ted op­po­nent or just in­dif­fer­ent, this trea­sure trove of doc­u­ments is our his­to­ry, for bet­ter or worse.”

She added, “All of our his­to­ry, both the good and the bad, is a part of our na­tion’s her­itage and it de­serves to be safe­guard­ed, if on­ly so that fu­ture gen­er­a­tions can choose to utilise it as guide posts or warn­ing signs against the same mis­steps.”

Plan­ning and De­vel­op­ment Min­is­ter Pen­ne­lope Beck­les said the mo­men­tous launch rep­re­sent­ed, “an in­ter­sec­tion of our past, present and fu­ture gen­er­a­tions all dri­ven through the aid of tech­nol­o­gy”.

The 238 pieces, which can now be ac­cessed on­line by the pub­lic, spans the pe­ri­od 1957 to 1981. She said they had in­cor­po­rat­ed Ar­ti­fi­cial In­tel­li­gence (AI), along with a bat­tery of oth­er dig­i­tal tech­nolo­gies, to pre­serve Williams’ lega­cy and al­so re­pro­duce him read­ing his writ­ten works aloud.

Beck­les said, “Through this process, we are pre­serv­ing his­to­ry and cer­tain­ly adding to the im­prove­ment of the hu­man con­di­tions, mak­ing Dr Williams’ work eas­i­ly ac­ces­si­ble in dig­i­tal for­mat for pur­pos­es of ed­u­ca­tion, in­for­ma­tion, re­search and oth­er en­deav­ours.”

The min­is­ter as­sured the on­line col­lec­tion was pro­tect­ed by var­i­ous forms of cy­ber-se­cu­ri­ty mea­sures, in­clud­ing fire­walls and an­ti-mal­ware.

De­liv­er­ing the fea­ture ad­dress on be­half of Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley, Ed­u­ca­tion Min­is­ter Dr Nyan Gads­by-Dol­ly said the Gov­ern­ment was “lead­ing the preser­va­tion of un­ques­tion­able arte­facts of his­tor­i­cal her­itage.”

In­di­cat­ing this was the fu­ture, Gads­by-Dol­ly said she was ex­cit­ed to see the project un­fold fur­ther. Warn­ing that fail­ure to pre­serve such his­tor­i­cal trea­sures could re­sult in some­one else do­ing so, and/or it crum­bling to be­come frag­ments in the wind, Gads­by-Dol­ly quot­ed from Row­ley’s pre­pared text, which said, “I will do what it takes to guar­an­tee that we can tell our chil­dren, and they can tell their chil­dren, that we did it.

“We kept the things that em­bold­ened our sense of pride and pa­tri­o­tism, those sym­bols of our jour­ney as a na­tion.”