BA and CEDEJ Launch Egyptian Press Archive Website
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On Sunday, 24 May 2015, the BA hosted the launch of the CEDEJ Egyptian Press electronic archive. The archive was digitized by the BA as part of its on-going collaboration with CEDEJ and their continuous role in documenting and preserving heritage.
The event was inaugurated by Dr. Ismail Serageldin, Director of the BA; André Parant, the French Ambassador in Egypt, accompanied by a large group of authors and journalists representing different Egyptian publishing houses.
Since 1976, the Center for Social, Legal, and Economic Documentation Studies (CEDEJ) has accumulated over 800 thousand articles in Arabic, English, and French. This collection covers events from the mid-seventies until 2010, allowing the public to trace the evolution of modern Egyptian society politically, culturally, and economically.
These articles have been collected from 13 printed newspapers and 11 electronic ones of the most important Egyptian news sources and have been divided into 15 sections. The articles tackle various topics, such as agriculture, politics, commerce, culture, and education. They were written by acclaimed writers and journalists and published by distinguished publishing houses, such as Akhbar el-Youm, Akher Sa’a, Al-Akhbar, Al-Gomhorya, and Al-Wafd.
The BA, as a pioneer in the field, has done a magnificent job in digitizing this prestigious collection using the latest technologies and the best digital applications. The BA has designed an user-friendly website that includes the entire collection of articles and guarantees an easy search process, while CEDEJ worked on indexing the archive so that it can be published electronically through the website.
It is noteworthy that the Center for Social, Legal, and Economic Documentation Studies is an interdisciplinary research center affiliated with the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the French National Center for Scientific Research. The center’s work includes Egypt and the Arab world. It was established in 1968 as part of the Egyptian-French cooperation agreement, and its research library contains over 35 thousand books, most of which are in Arabic. It also includes a map archive with maps covering almost every area in Egypt.