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 of Dr Er­ic Eu­stace Williams on Thurs­day at the Cen­tral Bank Au­di­to­ri­um, Port-of-Spain – Car­o­line Kan­galee said the labour of love had been 13 years in the mak­ing.

The Sys­tems Li­brar­i­an at NALIS was re­spon­si­ble for de­vel­op­ing the project pa­ra­me­ters; se­lect­ing in­ter­na­tion­al ICT bench-marks; 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’s 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 con­tin­ued, “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.”