PRAYAGRAJ, Dec. 9 -- A state-of-the-art digital repository showcasing rare manuscripts and historical records from the Mughal and British eras will open at the Government Public Library here next month, officials aware of the matter said. They said the initiative has been taken under the Smart City project with a budget of Rs 2.5 crore. The 161-year-old library established in 1864 is located in Chandrashekhar Azad Park in Prayagraj According to librarian Dr Gopal Mohan Shukla, the repository will provide visitors and research scholars access to invaluable works, some dating back 800 to 1,000 years. "Even the National Library in Kolkata does not have such a facility," he claimed. Among the prized possessions is the Shahnameh, the monumental Persian epic by poet Ferdowsi, written between 977 and 1010 CE. The over 250-page manuscript, comprising around 60,000 couplets, chronicles Iran's ancient history. Other rare works include A Treatise on Mills (1795), Selected Letters of Tipu Sultan (1811), and Institute of Hindu Law (1796), along with bound volumes of the Gazette of India and provincial gazettes dating back to the 19th century. Dr Shukla said many manuscripts had become brittle over time, necessitating painstaking conservation efforts. The restoration and digitisation were carried out in collaboration with the Indira Gandhi National Centre for the Arts (IGNCA), Delhi. "We followed the principle of minimum intervention and maximum preservation," said Dr Achal Pandey, head of conservation at IGNCA while talking over phone from Delhi. "Where adhesive materials were used, they were carefully removed using organic solvents such as acetone or xylene," Dr Pandey said. As per Dr Pandey, to restore flexibility to fragile sheets, ultra-fine 9 gsm Japanese tissue paper and gluten-free starch paste was used. "All manuscripts and rare works were scanned using German-made 'Book Eye' scanners besides metadata software that has been integrated to enable precise keyword searches for researchers," he added....