Anwar El-Sadat Digital Archive

In the context of preserving the modern history of Egypt, the President Anwar El-Sadat Digital Archive project aims at digitizing and documenting the El-Sadat’s epoch.

Having a perceptible finger print on the discourse of the Egyptian History, the late President Anwar El-Sadat (1918-1981) has implemented radical changes in the lives of all Egyptians.

Complying to Bibliotheca Alexandrina’s goal to preserve the heritage to all and to the yet coming generations in digital form, the International School  of Information Science (ISIS), a BA affiliated institute, in coordination with the Special Projects Department (SPD) have taken the initiative to produce El-Sadat digital archive http://sadat.bibalex.org, where the SPD compiled all the content and data about El-Sadat and the period of his presidency (1970-1981) and passed them on to be digitized and made available online through the most advanced techniques deployed by ISIS.

On 17th February, 2009, El-Sadat digital archive and museum were inaugurated under the auspices of Mrs. Mubarak with the presence of Mrs. Gihan El Sadat.

The material was compiled from different sources, like news agencies, museums, and various other institutions, in addition to the collection graciously granted by the late President’s family.

The glorious October battle, the protocols of Camp David Accord, the late President’s interviews with local and international  television broadcasts are available on the archive for users in a video and an audio format among other  220 documentary films featuring El-Sadat on different occasions.

The archive also contains more than 45 documents revealing the complete protocols of the Egyptian-Israeli peace process that were finalized by Camp David Accord in 1979, in addition to 139 documents relevant to October war. Furthermore, owing to the fact that the Arab-Israeli conflict had an impact on international relations, the archive also contains declassified material sourced from the National Security Archive (USA) relevant to October war.

The user can browse throughout the archive to display about  1,116 of written speeches, where an additional audio format may be available for some of them. The most prominent of which are the late President’s speech on October victory in 1973 and his speech at the Knesset in 1977. The user can also navigate through 12,509 pictures featuring  the late President in different  events and occasions, including some family images. That is in addition to 46 stamps, 29 postcards, 36 caricatures, 6 sketches / paintings, 46 book covers as well as other publications that were written by the late President himself or about him. This wide database will be continuously updated by any further relevant material.

All the material included in the archive has been submitted to Optical Character Recognition (OCR) to allow the user to search within the archive using a morphological search or an exact search for more precise results, where the detailed search tips backed-up with demonstration aids him/her to use the search tool successfully.

The archive with all its content and tools is considered a massive, user-friendly reference that works for researchers as well as for common readers.