International Telecommunication Union (ITU) digitizes historical archives

The ITU history portal was launched following a two-year programme to digitize the Union's archive of historical documents.

The objective of the History of ITU portal is to improve access to information on ITU and chart its evolution since its establishment in 1865, while ensuring the long-term preservation of historic documents. The archives will be freely accessible.

ITU’s Historical Documents Digitization Programme is an ongoing project to catalogue and scan key ITU documents and outcomes of major conferences and make them available on the web. Optical character recognition (OCR) allows the documents to be fully searchable.

Documents generated from ITU Plenipotentiary Conferences as well as from early radio, telegraph and telephone conferences are now available on the portal. For each conference, the portal provides background information, key data, and links to the documents and other materials catalogued by the Library.

The digitization programme will continue to make available documents of historic significance, including those related to Radiocommunication Conferences since 1903.

For more information, please see

http://www.itu.int/history

or contact:

Sanjay Acharya
Chief, Media Relations and Public Information
ITU
Tel: +41 22 730 5046
Mobile: +41 79 249 4861
Fax: +41 22 730 5939
E-mail: pressinfoitu.int

Kristine Clara
Head of Library & Archives Service
ITU
Tel: +41 22 730 5236
Mobile: +41 79 599 14 54
E-mail: kristine.claraitu.int