Uncle Ho documents to go digital On the occasion of the 125th birthdate of President Ho Chi Minh (May 19) the French ANOM archives centre has announced it will soon complete a massive digitalization project to unlock the content of thousands of items and artefacts related to his life. Digitizing historical texts, objects, specimens, personal letters, war journals and the like will make them readily accessible for study to a wide audience over the internet and opens up endless opportunity for research and study. A VOV correspondent stationed in France recently sat down with Olivia Pelltier, an archive specialist in charge of the project, for an interview to find out more about this fascinating project. Following are translated excerpts capturing the gist of the interview: VOV: The ANOM archives centre has preserved a large volume of important historical items related to the life of the late President Ho Chi Minh. Could you tell us more about the collection? Mrs Pelltier: The ANOM has preserved eight boxes of items covering the life of the late president and his life in France, Indochina and China containing an estimated 8,000 documents, artefacts and the like. The collection is vitally important to understanding the life of the late president and his intellectual honesty and philosophy— that’s why we decided to undertake the project and make the information easily accessible. VOV: How is the work progressing? Mrs Pelltier: We started earlier this year and expect to finish before year’s end. We are organizing the documents according to the timeline of when they occurred and then numbering the pages carefully and indexing by subject matter.  It is a meticulous and time consuming process. It takes a considerably long time to digitalise the items as we sometimes stop and take additional time to repair or restore ruined or partially destroyed items. However, the work is steadily moving forward and we expect to complete the project before the end of the year barring any unanticipated problems. VOV: As a person who is in charge of keeping document on Indochina and President Ho Chi Minh, have you met with any Vietnamese researchers? Mrs Pelltier: Many researchers from around the world have paid a great amount of attention to the project. In particular, researchers from  Vietnam, France and the US have come to the centre to discuss the project. They are especially interested in information regarding the political and administration organisations of the French colonialists in Indochina, the Nom language and agriculture and irrigation in Vietnam. We are also closely collaborating with colleagues in Vietnam pursuant to an agreement signed in the mid-1950s pertaining to sharing documents on activities in Indochina. A number of our colleagues at the Ho Chi Minh Museum are pleasure at accessing valuable documents at the centre. I have been associated with projects related to archiving President HCM documents for the past eight years and have been personally touched by the great leader. I have found him to be a very simple and hospitable person. VOV: Thank you very much  VOV