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Introduction to the Resolutions
of the Council of Policy of Cape of Good Hope


Making the Resolutions available in digital format

The process of making the Resolutions available in digital format was funded by the Dutch Government from the international cultural budget (HGIS) in the context of the programme Towards A New Age of Partnership (TANAP). The TANAP projects are a mutual attempt by the National Archives in The Hague and the Rijksuniversiteit of Leiden to ensure that the VOC archives worldwide are conserved, made available and managed in a proficient manner.

During discussions in 1999 with personnel of the Cape Town Archives Repository a visiting TANAP team identified the resumption of the publication of the Resolutions as the highest priority of South Africa ’s participation in the TANAP programme. It was decided that it would be a digital project, where both the already printed Resolutions (1651-1743) and the still not transcribed Resolutions (1744-1795) would be made available on the Internet.

The Head of the Cape Town Archives Repository co-ordinated the transcription project and provided office facilities, while the Stichting Huis der Nederlanden administered the budgets and handled the contracts with the personnel.

The conversion project involved the scanning of the already printed Resolutions as well as the editing and correcting of the information. All the documents were then converted into the international platform-independent XML format (eXtensible Mark-up Language), where the coding was done according to the internationally acknowledged TEI standard (Text Encoding Initiative). The Centre for Business and Language Services/ Sentrum vir Besigheids- en Taaldiens ( Bellville , South Africa ) performed the technical implementation and also provided XML and TEI training for the transcribers.

 

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