Google is working with the Nelson Mandela Foundation to publish more than 10,000 of Mandela’s personal records. They will donate $1.25 million to the foundation so that these never-before-seen documents can be scanned and published.
“If you look at all the people talking about peace with the protests right now, there’s got to be some message we can extract from these documents.” — Daniel Lederman, Google’s director of new business development for Europe, the Middle East and Africa.
Google spokesman Luke Mckend says These personal records from Mandela span much of his life, including his 27-year imprisonment for fighting against apartheid. The database will eventually be freely accessible on the Internet. Mckend says Google joined the project because they have the capacity and infrastructure to not only preserve historical heritage, but also leverage the potential in classrooms.
While Mandela has given his foundation full control over what will get put on the Internet, they will skip the “extremely personal” documents. Achmat Dangor, the foundation’s chief executive, says these documents are not being censored, but simply don’t “add value to the life of Nelson Mandela” and are not relevant.
Mandela established the foundation in 2004 for the purpose of increasing access to documents about his life and the foundation is also appealing to foreign governments to share any documents they have on Mandela. As Dangor puts it anyone with a computer “from Timbuktu to New York” will soon be able to access these valuable documents, which definitely falls in line with the foundation’s objectives.