Google is helping preserve a piece of history. The company has donated $1.25 million to the Nelson Mandela Foundation Center of Memory to help digitize memorabilia related to the South African leader.
Documents, photos, and multimedia from the 92-year-old Nobel Peace Prize winner's life will be included in this free online archive. The archive will also feature correspondence between Mandela and world leaders, activists, family, and friends in the time leading up to the end of apartheid in South Africa. Although this treasure trove of multimedia isn't live yet, it will be accessible globally "in the future," Google said.
"The online Mandela archive… will be a wealth of information for those wanting to learn about and research the life and legacy of this extraordinary African statesman," Google said in a blog post.
Google is already aiding in the indexing of the information, but it aims to provide the search technology that will make the multimedia catalog accessible to anyone, from anywhere.
According to the Nelson Mandela Foundation site, "memory resources documenting the life and times of [Mandela] are to be found in an extraordinary range of locations, both within South Africa and internationally. These resources are embedded and various legal and other jurisdictions."
The search engine giant is also helping to digitize other important historical documents. In partnership with the Yad Vashem Museum in Israel, Google recently created the world's largest archive of Holocaust photos and documents.
Google Art Project is another program the company has launched that harnesses Google Street View technology to give Web surfers glimpses inside the galleries of museums all over the world.
"At Google we want to help bring the world's historical heritage online – and the Internet offers new ways to preserve and share this information, in Africa and elsewhere," Google said.
Google donated another $1.25 million to the Desmond Tutu Peace Center in Cape Town, in order document and digitize his works and create an interactive digital learning center.