UNESCO exercise soft power through software:A study of the WINISIS software in documenting cultural heritage sites

Abstract

This paper aims to discuss how the WINISIS software which is developed by UNESCO can be used for documenting the heritage sites worldwide with very little investment. This paper tries to explore how the searchable digital archive of full text documents in doc, xls, ppt, html, pdf, audio, video or picture format can be created in the WINISIS format. The precise objective of this paper is to study the capability of the software developed by UNESCO in creating the digital document archives containing text, pictures, talks, video etc. This paper also aims to find out how the database can be used and shared with other software.

The study will be carried out by installing the WINISIS software and studying the WINISIS database that primarily consists of around 12 files ending with .mst, .fdt, .pft and .ifp etc. and at the same time creating the database of heritage sites of Jammu and Kashmir.

WINISIS is generally considered as cataloguing software. However, it has emerged as a powerful software tool for creating the digital archive of files containing text, pdf, audio, video excel or similar types of documents. Anyone can create searchable archive of full text digital documents so easily with WINISIS and can manage it conveniently for effective information services. The write-up will provide the basic steps involved in creating the database of heritage sites of Jammu and Kashmir.The research will focus only on the WINISIS software. No Comprehensive study has been carried out regarding harnessing the soft power of WINISIS software in documenting cultural heritage sites.