Mandela archive available on the Web

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif., March 27 (UPI) -- Google says a multimedia archive of photographs, recordings and documents about former South African President Nelson Mandela has gone live on the Web.

The archive was part of a $1.25 million grant to the Nelson Mandela Center of Memory based in Johannesburg, South Africa, dedicated to thoroughly documenting Mandela's life, slashgear.com reported Tuesday.

The archive will provide access to information about Mandela, 93, including letters written to friends and family during his 27-year imprisonment for fighting South Africa's apartheid culture.

Diary entries and photographs will also be available, including the earliest known photograph of the anti-apartheid leader.

Google has worked with the Mandela Center to make access to the material as easy to access as possible, creating different sections detailing Mandela's life in different ways.

"The Mandela Digital Archive Project shows how the Internet can help preserve historical heritage and make it available to the world," Steve Crossan, director of the Google Cultural Institute, said.

Google's Cultural Institute has undertaken similar projects in the past, including digitizing the Dead Sea Scrolls and the Yad Vashem Holocaust materials.

The Mandela archive can be accessed at http://archives.nelsonmandela.org.