Women Resource Centre, computer lab opened

Islamabad: Outgoing adviser to the prime minister on national history and literary heritage Irfan Siddiqui on Wednesday inaugurated the Women Resource Centre at the library.

The centre was established with the cooperation of National Commission on the Status of Women.

The adviser thanked Secretary of NCSW Sameena Hassan for the centre's establishment and said the centre would provide a platform to the women for their creative writing endeavours, study and research in a peaceful environment.

He said the National Library of Pakistan after equipping with latest facilities had transformed into an effective knowledge centre for the visitors of federal capital as well as the whole country.

"This national level library was neglected since its establishment in the year 1993 with no development project started during this long period. However, the projects worth Rs110 million initiated during the last one and a half year have played instrumental role in improvement of its facilities while making it a far better place for the readers," he said.

Speaking on the occasion, Sameena Hassan said the NCSW would continue its cooperation for providing books and other facilities to the women. The adviser later inaugurated a 20-computer lab equipped with special programmes for the visually impaired persons at the library.

He said the lab established with the cooperation of Ministry of Information, Technology and Telecommunications, was indeed a great addition in the 'Braille Corner' of the library. Irfan Siddiqui also inaugurated a project of digitisation of the rare and old documents.

He said the library would digitize 100 to 400 years old rare documents, books and newspapers under this project and 10,000 documents of 53,00,000 pages had been selected for the purpose.