On the occasion of its 135^th Foundation Day, National Archives of India (NAI) reduced the user charges for downloading documents from Abhilekh Patal (https://www.abhilekh-patal.in/jspui/) in order to facilitate access to records. For supply of digital images (including Digitize On Demand), the charges have been reduced as follows:

For Indian Scholars downloading of first 20 Pages will be free of cost. The detailed slots may be seen below:

1. 0-20 images- free of cost.
2. 20-50 images -Rs 2/- per image
3. 50-100 images-Rs 3/- per image.
4. 100-above- Rs 5/- per image.

For Foreign Scholars downloading of first 20 Pages will be free of cost. The detailed slots may be seen below:

1. 0-20 pages- free of cost.
2. 20-50 pages-Rs 5/- per pages
3. 50-100 pages-Rs 10/- per page.
4. 100-above- Rs 15/- per pages.

If the number of images falls in the next slot, then that slot's rate will be charged for all the pages. The rates for providing scanned images of oversize and large size maps/ documents upto A-0 size to both, Indian and Foreign Scholars have been reduced from Rs. 20/- to Rs 15/- per image (300 dpi). Minimum charges have been removed.

Reprography Service Rates (i.e. physical printouts) for Indian Scholars have been reduced from Rs. 5/- to Rs 2/- per page, and for Foreign Scholars from Rs 10/- to Rs 4/- per page. Similarly, charges for photocopying of colour pages for India Scholars have been reduced from Rs. 20/- to Rs 8/- per page, and for Foreign Scholars from Rs 40/- to Rs 16/- per page. 

NAI remains firmly committed towards improving ease of access to our historical heritage and will endeavour to completely eliminate paperwork and filling up of forms for this purpose in future. It has launched an extremely ambitious program for digitizing all its records, which has already resulted in hosting almost 8.81 crore pages on Abhilekh Patal. It is NAI’s endeavour to completely digitize its records over the next two years to facilitate wide outreach and easy any-time, anywhere access to its holdings.

The National Archives of India (NAI) is the custodian of the non-current records of the Government of India, and holding them in trust for the use of the records creators and the users at large. NAI has been constantly endeavoring to enhance and simplify access to its records holdings. A review of current policy of access to records was recently undertaken keeping in view the global best practices. It was observed that the ongoing digitization of records and archival holdings by the major archival repositories around the globe, has changed the way people access records. The online access portal of the NAI - Abhilekh-PATAL was launched on 11^th March 2015 and has ever since become immensely popular amongst the users of archives. As on date it has nearly thirty thousand registered users from over 200 countries and has recorded over 20 lakh hits so far.

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Sunil Kumar Tiwari

pibculture[at]gmail[dot]com

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