Journalist builds information centre and archive at home

Some of the rare items at Abdur Rob Suzon's information hub and archive at Adarshapara. PHOTO: STAR

An archive built by journalist Abdur Rob Suzon in his home has now turned into an information centre at Adarshapara in Lalmonirhat town. People from all classes, especially newsmen, have been gathering here and have been greatly benefitted. People have a great source of information here, since the archive carries at least three hundred different books, four hundred regular-irregular newspapers, little magazines and others. All of these have been collected from different places of Bangladesh and India. But the archive doesn't end there, in addition, it houses at least one thousand documents of different important cases and General Diary (GDs), and the archive is enriched with information on education, election, freedom fighters, language movement, and others
The Daily Prothom Alo's District Correspondent Abdur Rob Suzon, son of late AKM Shamsuzzoha and Rahima Begum started building the archive in his home on 6 February 2000. He has been developing the archive continuously till now. “There are at least two thousand news clips of significant news in the archive, and there are many photographs of important incidents and information in the archive,” said Abdur Rob Suzon, adding that he originally started the archive for his own use and eventually realized its potential to help other people as well. “There are some important books named Bengal Police Manual For the Instruction of constables in there duets, pubished in Calcutta in 1918, The Golden book-Encyclopedia, Book-2, Arther-To Blood, all pubsihed in New York in 1959,” the journalist said. There are books of matriculation, Bengali literature and Bengali rapid reader “Sahitta Kolika” published in the year 1943-44, “Samograh Bakaron Koumudi”, written Pandit Ishwar Chandra Bidya Sagar and many other antique books, newspapers and publications. Of the very rare collections are Bengali newspaper “Annesa”, published in April 1970.
Brief History of Dacoity Cases in the Rangpur District in 1931, Miseries of Misconceived Democracy in 2013, East Meets West: Bangladesh-Scotland in 1999 and others are unique pieces stored in the antique collection. Senior journalists in Lalmonirhat, Gokul Roy and Shafiqul Islam said that journalists are tremendously benefited due to the existence of the archive, and it is playing an important role in the district. “If we need any information detail about anything that occurred in the past, we go to the archive,” they said. Founder Director of Lalmonirhat District Mesuem, Ashrafuzzaman Mandol said “The journalist's archive is full of many antique collections of information. These rare collections should be preserved in a more formal and protective manner so that they remain available to people always”.
Suzon collected these antique documents and information out of his personal interest but he has been facing the problem of preserving them properly due to lack of required protective furniture at home. “I think these should to be preserved better, they should be better categorized and filed. They shouldn't be lying about. But I can't really invest in doing so since I don't have the capacity to purchase the materials and required furniture,” he said. He also mentioned that he started building the information archive after being encouraged by the Daily Prothom Alo's Editor Matiur Rahman.