The National Media Archiving Center (NMAC) that opened in Riyadh on Tuesday would not act as a media watchdog said Saudi Minister of Culture and Information Iyad Madani. Located in Riyadh and fully digitized, the NMAC is now open for subscriptions from media establishments interested to avail of its services, Madani told a press conference after inaugurating the center. Madani told reporters that opening NMAC would not mean that the center is going to act as a watchdog on media establishments and organizations in Saudi Arabia. Rather, he said, the facility is meant to serve those media establishments should they want to utilize its services through subscription. “Our center sounds like a monitoring body, which it is, but it is for a noble cause – to provide organized and well-archived bibliographies and data of journalistic significance to the media industry in the Kingdom,” said Madani. He added that NMAC is considered to be the biggest of its kind in the Middle East. The center would open its services for the benefit of individual journalists and media researchers at a later date, said Madani, adding that a great deal of translation work would also be done at the Center with input taken from printed and electronic media from a number of languages other than Arabic. He said the center's efficient data storage facility, the work on which had started in early 2005, would benefit by offering great services to the users of the Arabic language more easily. NMAC would relieve major media establishments in Saudi Arabia from the task of setting up or maintaining their own archiving centers, he said. “All they (media establishments) are required to do is be registered subscribers for using the center's services, which include access to printed or broadcasts material on various issues and topics and at their own convenience for 24 hours a day, seven days a week,” he said. Users would also have instant access to news analyses and commentaries whether critical or supportive of the Kingdom, published by international media. Additionally, the center would also cater to “urgent media issues,” such as updating developing stories and ongoing events on electronic media for users in the local media. Commenting on the timing of the establishing the NMAC, Madani said the Ministry of Culture and Information had realized that old-fashioned manual archiving and traditional storage methods of filing and documentation are things of the past. He said that digital and electronic technologies have taken over the world, “and to achieve its goals, the center is utilizing Internet technology to its maximum.” The center would fully transform archiving and storage of data in the media industry in Saudi Arabia, he added. The state-of-the-art technology used to develop the center has features that would listen around the clock and monitor local, regional and international satellite radio and television channels 24/7 for storing and archiving media outputs, he said. The center's www.nmac.info, has already been launched and is now available for users. Abdulaziz Al-Melhim, Assistant Undersecretary for Studies and Planning and General Supervisor of Information Technology at the ministry, said the most challenging task for the Center would be to store, archive and classify data grabbed from international television channels as it involves billions of digitized data, made available for easy and instant use by Saudi and Arab media people. “Although, it is just the beginning, we are advancing well in this area,” he said. The center's operating system has been divided into two main departments, the Central Archiving Department and Service Department. The main function of the Archiving Department is to store and archive fundamental media clippings gathered from the global through electronic means. The process starts from collecting of media material, digitally archiving and classifying accordingly in a way that offers easy access to the users. The Service Department offers an easy to apply mechanism for an instant access to the users, who could get information on news analysis on various specific issues. __
