Set up an open-access, multimodal, collaborative, international archive of schoolbooks and artefacts related to school education; and
Facilitate its effective usage by a diverse set of users such as school teachers, schoolbook writers, curriculum developers, illustrators, editors, printers, publishers, historians and education- researchers.
The vision is detailed in the following sections :
Content of the Archive
International Perspective : The archive is designed with and promotes an international perspective. Specifically, given the shared educational and textbook culture in South Asia, it has a special focus on Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, Maldives, Nepal, India, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka.
Time-period : The project, in principle, has no restrictions with respect to the time-period of archived materials. However, as a general guideline, it focuses on both colonial and postcolonial schoolbooks from India and other South Asian countries; whereas for other countries, it prioritizes contemporary textbooks.
Networking and Collaboration
The archive is primarily be housed at the Azim Premji University. However, it is envisioned as a collaborative project which provides open access to its content, through this interoperable digital repository to all possible users.
Special efforts are made to reach out to organizations both within and outside the country that run similar initiatives or may benefit from this project. The initiative views collaborations as opportunities to: learn from the experiences of others, leverage already existing resources, help in finalizing its own priorities as well as maximizing the effective usage of its archive in future.
In addition, the SBA repository solicits and allow contributions from users, such as research scholars, historians and teachers. This could include digitized copies from their personal or institutional collections, providing annotations for certain books, documents and so on (curated by a site administrator).
The initiative may also in due course consider supporting a few regional schoolbooks archives, housed at partner organizations.
Usage of the Archive
The archive is envisioned not only as a place where academics come to look for materials to answer the questions that interest them but one that kindles interest in and helps a teacher to find answers to her key concerns, that helps a schoolbook writer, illustrator or editor to understand the field better and set new standards; and generally helps challenge the scholar-practitioner divide.
Creating awareness about the existence of the archive and potential ways in which it can be used; as well as facilitating its effective usage by diverse users (school teachers, curriculum designers, schoolbook writers, illustrators, editors, book designers, printers, publishers, historians, education and policy researchers etc.) are thus key objectives of this initiative; and it focuses on both (building the archive as well as facilitating its usage) right from the beginning.