The public Macau Foundation (FM) on Tuesday launched its “Macau Memory” website – an online platform containing various forms of historical materials related to Macau – so that members of the public can gain access to materials such as historical documents, historical maps, old newspapers and postcards on the Internet.
“Macau Memory” is a project that the foundation launched several years ago to collect various kinds of historical materials about Macau and then sort and digitalise them.
A launch ceremony of the website, officially known as Macau Memory Cultural and Historical website, was held at the Macau Science Centre in Nape on Tuesday, attended by about 300 representatives from a wide range of government entities, schools, libraries, as well as from the academic, cultural, arts and religious sectors.
The “Macau Memory” website is available in Macau’s two official languages – Chinese and Portuguese.
A statement by the foundation Tuesday said that “Macau Memory is a large-scale cultural project that comprehensively integrates Macau’s historical resources into a platform. The foundation has been collecting and organising various kinds of Macau-related historical and cultural materials from the past centuries and is digitalising them so as to ensure that they will be preserved forever.”
The statement said that the project “establishes an online multimedia database that shares [Macau’s] collective memory and aims to encourage members of the public to participate in [the project] and promote Macau’s image.”
According to the statement, the “Macau Memory” website contains various “invaluable” historical and cultural materials, such as files and documents, books, newspapers and magazines, poems, inscriptions, pictures, maps, photographs, postcards, posters, stamps, audio and videos.
The statement said that the launch of the website was a “gift” for the 20th anniversary of Macau’s return to the motherland.
Delivering a speech during Tuesday’s ceremony, Wu Zhiliang, the foundation’s president, said that “Macau Memory” was an important project about Macau’s historical and cultural research and development, as well as an important integral part of the ongoing establishment of Macau’s “local knowledge system”.
Wu said that the website provides members of the public with easy access to historical materials in “traditional” forms such as files, maps and collections, enabling easier dissemination of such materials. He said that the historical materials had been given “a new life” thanks to modern technology.
According to the Macau Post Daily, Wu said he expected the website to encourage residents to contribute to the ongoing enrichment of Macau’s collective memory.
In addition to visiting the website: https://www.macaumemory.mo, residents can also access the project on Facebook, WeChat and Instagram.
