Sonderband 2. International Council on Archives. Dritte Europäische Archivkonferenz, Wien 11. bis 15. Mai 1993. Tagungsprotokolle (1996)

4. Session / Séance. Strategies for Links with Historical Research / Stratégies de Communication envers la Recherche historique - Gonzalez, Pedro: Data Bases and Long Distance Communication. A Spanish Éxperience / Bases de données et information a distance. Une expérience des archives espagnoles (english 319 - français 343)

5.1. Broad outline of the project

We will not attempt to go into too much detail on technical aspects here (such as computers or archives) but it is advisable to comment on some details of the project in order to give an idea of its complexity and, at the same time, the great opportunities which it offers. This will be done concisely and in the simplest possible

way.

When the project reaches completion in late 1992, about nine million pages (approximately 10 % of everything which is in the Archivo) will be digitalized or recorded on optical discs. After following a complex process of preparation carried out by the Archivo’s specialised staff (selecting documents to be digitalized, ordering, describing, cataloguing), the old papers from the Casa de Contrataciôn, the Consejo de Indias, or the Viceroyalties etc., will have gone through 15 scanners, and working double shifts fourteen hours a day a digital image of them will be obtained. These digital images will occupy more than 3000 Gigabytes (3 Terabytes, or in other words 3, 000 000 000 000 characters), in several thousands of 940 Mb optical discs.

This set of digital reproductions obtained from original documents make up the nucleus of the Digital Image Storage System which allows the researcher’s consultation service to be carried out without it being necessary to resort to the original to read it. These digital images can be sent through a high speed network to a monitor in the reading room so that the researcher can display them, read them or print them at leisure.

However, for this option to be possible the reader has to previously locate the documents which he wants to look at. The function of locating for consultation is achieved in any archive by means of what is known as „finding aids“.

That is to say, a combination of inventories, catalogues and indices which provide the necessary means to carry out an intellectual and physical check of the documents. Furthermore, in order to respond to the specific needs of a Historical Archive, the system has been designed in such a way as to respect the traditional principles of the treatment of archives (especially the principle of provenance). It also has to be able to collect all the descriptive information created over two centuries of AGI history.

All of this descriptive information, which is currently included in the traditional finding aids, has now become part of another module of the system which allows documents to be located. Indeed, as the project was being carried out, every one of the information instruments which were previously in the Archive had been included (and not only those concerning documents to be digitalized). The work of describing has also increased significantly, especially concerning documents which are to be digitalized.

4. Session/Séance: Gonzalez, Data Bases and long distance Communcation

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