Birzeit, 20/03/2022: The Palestinian Museum celebrated the launch of the Palestinian Museum Digital Archive (PMDA)’s new updated website (www.palarchive.org). The site includes over 235,668 materials that illuminate various aspects of Palestinian social history beginning from the year 1800, and collected from individuals and institutions across historical Palestine, Lebanon and Jordan. Users will be able to search, explore, save and download the archival information they need, making the platform an important resource for researchers and the general public.
The new version of the site includes user-friendly features such as improved quick and easy access to photographs and documents, captions in both Arabic and English, the classification of listed materials into searchable categories, and allowing users to suggest edits to already-archived material to be verified by the Museum team.
Palestinian and Arab institutions, individuals and cultural actors participated in the online celebration of the website launch by publishing selected photos from the digital archive and sharing them on various social media platforms.
PMDA is one of the Museum’s most significant projects as well as one of its permanent digital platforms. Work began on it four years ago, to include paper documents, photographs, memoirs, artworks, visual recordings and videos from endangered archival collections.
The archival material on the website is diverse and includes personal, family, artistic and institutional collections belonging to ordinary individuals, writers, artists, newspapers, magazines, associations and professional unions. It also includes notable individual collections such as the collections of Musa Alami, Khalil Sakakini, Tawfiq Ziad, Mahmoud Shukair, Nehaya Mohammad, Mahira Dajani, Ali Kazak, Sharif Kanaana, Hussein al-Barghouti, Fatima al-Muhib, Sa’adeh Isrhaid, Francois Abu Salem, Samih al-Qasim, Omar al-Qasim, Hanna Naqara, Samih Hammouda, Walid al-Fahoum, Nabil Anani, George al-A’ma and others.
The archive also includes institutional collections from the Palestinian National Theatre - El-Hakawati in Jerusalem, the Arab Women Union Society, the Palestinian Red Crescent Society, the General Union of Palestinian Women, TAMER Institute for Community Education, Dar Al-Tifel Al-Arabi Organization in Jerusalem, the municipalities of Salfeet, Tulkarm and Nablus, First Sareyyet Ramallah, El-Funoun Palestinian Popular Dance Troupe, the Attali’ah and ash-Sha’b newspapers, photographer Joss Dray’s collection, RIWAQ - Centre for Architectural Conservation, the Khalil Sakakini Cultural Center, the Orthodox Community Archive in Haifa, the Mantar Museum in Tulkarm, musician and playwright Mustafa al-Kurd’s collection, and other valuable collections that chronicle the activities of ordinary institutions and personal histories of Palestinian families and figures, including the pivotal role of national and artistic figures who influenced Palestinian life and its political, social and cultural landmarks.
Director General of the Palestinian Museum, Adila Laïdi-Hanieh, PhD, stated that with the launch of the PMDA website, the Museum has succeeded in achieving a new strategic goal. The site constitutes an important historical reference for Palestine, connecting Palestinians around the world and documenting their history for future generations.
This project is conducted in partnership with the University of California Los Angeles (UCLA) Library, and funded by Arcadia, a charitable fund of Lisbet Rausing and Peter Baldwin, that supports work to preserve endangered cultural heritage, protect endangered ecosystems, and promote access to knowledge. Since 2002, Arcadia has awarded more than 919 million US Dollars to projects around the world.
