Gamal Abdel Nasser Digital Archive

If you are interested in Egypt's modern history and political life, Gamal Abdel Nasser digital archive would represent a significant historical resource. Rich information and rare documents are fully searchable representing a user-friendly reference library for you. The digital archive is currently available in English and French interfaces as well for better access to non-Arabic speakers. That is in addition to some translated material into both languages.

You can find famous speeches for the president in various events such as the Revolution Declaration, the Nationalization of the Suez Canal, and the announcement of the Union with Syria. An interesting collection of stamps is also available in very high resolution, enabling you to capture all details easily. You will also find a large coins collection, including coins belonging to the fifties and the sixties. Another remarkable category is the photos collection which consists of photos of different official events and ceremonies, and also a huge number of personal photos of Abdel Nasser. Moreover, there is a wide collection of documentary movies including the War at Palestine, the nomination of Abdel Nasser for presidency and also his funeral.Nasser foundation has recently added a number of press articles featuring President Abdel Nasser including New York Times magazine, Daily News, Washington Post, Al Ahram weekly, etc.

The ISIS team digitized the entire collection of former Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser, donated by the Nasser Foundation. The collection was published through an integrated searchable website, which is mainly intended for research and documentation purposes. The entire digital archive is freely available at http://nasser.bibalex.org and has been receiving an average of 1.5 million hits per month.

The collection at a glance

• About 1,360 speeches—provided in text, audio and sometimes video format—given by the president in different national and international occasions. The video speeches are an outstanding addition to the website. For the first time, Nasser's speeches are provided in text, audio and video.
• Over 51,000 photos and portraits of Abdel Nasser in various national, international, and personal events during the period 1930 to 1970
• Over 1,190 documentary movies covering the period from 1948 to 1970
• Egyptian Documents, including:
  • Nasser in the Press, which lists events that happened during Nasser's reign
  • Handwritten Documents, which includes some personal correspondence and speeches drafts among other documents, all in Nasser's own handwriting
  • Revolutionary Command Council (RCC) decrees
  • Minutes of the meetings of The Central Committee for Arab Socialist Union (ASU)
• Over 52,850 British documents obtained from the Public Record Office in London
• About 8,000 American documents
• A complete archive of articles written by the famous Egyptian political journalist Mohamed Hassanein Heikal in various newspapers and magazines. The articles are provided with search functionality in both subject and content.
• English and French magazines and newspapers featuring the late president.
• A large number of cultural items related to Abdel Nasser’s reign and the revolution period, including 138 poems, 1,216 national songs, three books written by or about Abdel Nasser, 35 coins, 125 caricatures, and 326 stamps.

The collection is continuously being updated with new items. One of the recent updates is the “Happened on this Day” feature, which allows users to view events, news, speeches, or documentary movies that happened in a certain year on the same day. The collection has also been expanded with new material including 43 speeches in video and audio, 29 greeting cards, 13 pamphlets released by the Free Officers Movement, and 22 documents containing meeting minutes of the Egyptian Cabinet in 1,176 pages.

How can I use the archive?
The major strength of the Nasser project lies in the integration of all the different information sources and media under a single interface and in a fully searchable form. The entire archive is available at http://nasser.bibalex.org. Researchers may find all possible documents, pictures, videos, stamps, articles, etc., pertaining to their field of interest by performing a single search. The speeches and documents are all categorized by date, which makes it easier for researchers and historians seeking a specific range of Nasser’s political life. Searching within a specific item category by date, subject, category, or keyword is also possible.

International recognition
BA participated with Nasser’s website project in the World Summit for Information Society (WSIS) conference that took place in Tunis 16-18 November 2005 and in the Stockholm Challenge Award competition in 2006.

Technical details
The collection, donated by Nasser foundation, was scanned, cataloged, indexed and subjected to optical character recognition (OCR). A database was constructed for each topic storing each document’s text along with its meta data. Backend applications were also developed to be used by librarians/specialists for managing the collections, associating each item with its metadata, adding keywords, and refining various descriptions. The entire collection was presented in a web based interface with full-text Arabic and English search in both meta data and content. The website facilitates browsing of the collection through displaying the various items as well as providing full text and morphological searching, presenting rich information for both researchers and the public. The website (http://nasser.bibalex.org) has been online since October 2004 and is regularly updated.

Website: http://nasser.bibalex.org