Preserving Yemen’s historyKeeping information handy [Archives:2003/624/Community]
ABDO MOQBIL AL-SABIRI
Under the motto, Documentation is the Nation's Memory, the 3rd training course in documentation and archiving was held at the Yemeni Club for Information & Technical Education (YCITE) from Jan. 18 to Feb. 8.
“The course aimed at promoting information technology in Yemen in general in order to gain IT skills and capabilities for the benefit of the employees working in archiving,” Mohammed Ali Rajeh, the General Manager of the YCITE said.
He added, it “aimed also at eradicating information illiteracy through the use of information technology in order to cope with modern technologies in administrative documentation.”
On the great significance of organizing this course, Dr., Zaki Alwardi, an expert at documentation and information said, “Administrative archiving or as it involves a host of documents that has been established or obtained by an institution, for instance during performing its legal commitment. So in this case, an institution or organization maintains those documents as records for its programs, works, decisions and its processes.”
Accordingly, documents are considered to be vital for the institution's activities as well as its relations with other institutions.
“Archiving constitutes a valuable reference for administrators, and employees in any institution particularly in decision making, supervising, planning, monitoring, and organizing,” Zaki noted.
“The modern notion of archiving depends basically on organizing those documents since its infancy. When a need arises to these documents, an easy access is readily accessible,” Zaki further explained.
In this regard, the significance of organizing those training courses is to provide employees and workers in archiving units and departments with new training outcomes with a view of improving and promoting their skill in this regard.
This also will enable them to perform the archiving works efficiently in order to achieve a highly sophisticated system in those institutions.
Holding and organizing training courses will also prepare the way for the trainees to be fully equipped theoretically as well as practically in order to:-
Have an easy access to the required documents.
Support the decision making as a result of availability of information, and documents.
Provide costs of keeping files and documents.
Gain control of heaps of input and output documents.
Handle documents and files within the institutions itself.
Keeping the safety of those files.
Use modern technicalities in dealing with documents in the context of storing and retrieving.
Put an end to heaps of documents and files.
In order to get on with information technology, well-qualified cadres and eminent professors took part in the course. Those include, Dr. Zaki Hussien Alwardi, the Chairman of Library, Documentation & Information Department, Sana'a University, Dr. Mohammed Ali Rajeh, the General Manager of the YCITE, Dr. Mohammed Ali Ahmed, Manager of Training and Rehabilitation and Mr. Sami Ali Al-Khawlani.
Trainees from the governmental bodies took part in the course included those in parliament, industry, social care, the Islamic Bank of Yemen, and the Arab Bank.
Sabah Mahmoud Yahya, a female employee at the Social Care Fund, said that the course has helped a lot in improving the archiving information in a proper manner.
In this regard, the course helped the trainees to get acquainted with knowing all there is to know about enlarging learner's understanding in that course along with promoting and establishing an information data base using computers.
The training course involved putting data in computer, updating data available in the computer, searching and retrieving for a number of the stored data.
In addition to this, the course exchanged data together with other systems.
Preparing the course curricula has been done basically on the basis of the actual application in accordance with the archiving and automatic documentation works as that of other Arab countries in all scientific aspects.
“We are thankful to the YCITE and its General Manager for holding such useful courses in order to develop the information technology,” Sabah concluded.
Abdulqader Ali Abdullah Sharaf Addeen, of the Social Care Fund, said that the training course in the field of the administrative archiving was excellent.
“This can be attributed to the good progress we have made from trainers and lectures in everything related to archiving, administrative and automatic documentation,” he added.
On his part, Mr. Abdunnaser al-Moqbeli, a trainee from the parliament said: “although the content of the course was not of direct benefit to my current job, but the contents therein indeed was of great benefit. Designing your own data base and browsing the world of internet were another beneficial aspects of the course.
“I deeply recommend all those who are interested in archiving to attend such a course,” al-Moqbeli noted.
Al-Moqbeli said that rehabilitating and promoting the administrative cadre for the state reflected positively in the field of administrative archiving which is the mainstay for preserving the public document of the state.
“We have greatly benefited from the course and as a result a great importance has been paid to the historical, archaeological documents and how to classify, organize, and document them automatically,” al-Moqbeli noted further.
“In order to make use of such course, I advice the governmental institutions to urge their cadres in administrative archiving. We are grateful to trainers and lecturers including Dr. Zaki al-Wardi, the YCITE general manager, and Mr. Mohammed Assiaghi, for making a success in this course” he concluded.
The YCITE was established in 2001 by eminent specialists in library, documentation and information technology. It has been entrusted with promoting the information technology with the view pushing development as well as broadening the horizons of computer sciences, IT, automatic documentation, classification and library for a better future.
The YCITE is the first of its kind in Yemen for selective disseminating services, and providing researchers and students to hold the scientific degrees, such as BA, doctor's degrees, and others.
It is a multidisciplinary laboratory operated by professors and highly qualified staff and it includes a core of full-time as well as part-times employees.
The central focus of the club's activity is the development of advanced information technology ) computer technology, appropriate to the communication and manipulation.
Different training courses in the context of IT for the governmental as well as non-governmental organizations are held periodically for assisting these sectors for a better IT technology.
Advanced information in the IT is readily accessible for researchers and students in different specialization including the direct line and other information resources.
The YCITE provides researchers with research services research for books, and valuable references at the academic and documentation centers along with providing information about data and information in any field of study through the use of the Internet. Besides researchers have an easy access to opening a file for a field of study within database to the researches that have been gathered.
The YCITE also aims at raising IT awareness among the public through publishing periodicals and cultural information handouts.
Participating to rehabilitate and qualify researchers in departments and institutions
The second training course was held in Nov. 2002.
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