The InternationalInformation & Library Review

www.elsevier.com/locate/iilr

The digital library of Iberoamerica and theCaribbean: humanizing technological resources

Lourdes B Feria*, Paulina Machuca

Coordination for Information Technologies, University of Colima, Av. Universidad 333, Colima 28040,Mexico

Summary In the last two decades, the University of Colima has worked out a veryinteresting project for information technologies development through its Coordina-tion for Information Technologies (CIT) program. This has provided years ofexperience in the application of technologies for the academic community. Afterits designation as a UNESCO Regional Center, our university developed a veryambitious education and research plan that was submitted to one of UNESCO’seducational programs. This project was approved as the ‘‘UNESCO Chair on NewInformation Technologies,’’ and it started working successfully with the ‘‘DiplomaCourse on Digital Libraries’’ 2 years ago.The Diploma Course is part of the action taken toward the creation of a Great

Iberoamerican and the Caribbean Digital Library. Today 144 trainers from 36 nationallibraries in Latin America and the Caribbean state members are receiving trainingcourses based on the UNESCO methodology, which is comprised of the registration ofdigital objects, adherence to standards for audio and video digitization, anddevelopment of an international open-source software for information management.& 2004 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

New necessities for a new world

‘‘Internet is the tissue of our lives,’’ says Castells(2001, p. 15). Nowadays we could compare theInternet to the electric grid and the electricalmotor because of its capacity to distribute thepower of information to all activities in the humansphere. Just as the generation and distribution ofelectric energy set a precedent for organization infactories and enterprises, the Internet is now thetechnological base of organization in the informa-tion society.

The appearance of the Internet as a new meansof communication has generated great controversyabout the emergence of new patrons of social

interaction. The integration of virtual commu-nities, based mainly in online communication, hasbeen interpreted as a dissociation process betweenlocality and sociability. But according to Castells(2001, p. 137), this debate is obsolete, because itsaffirmations were made before the generalizedspread of the Internet, and based on the firstInternet users. This argument was not supported byany research corpus that would evaluate the realimpact and the use of the Internet. One of the mainapplications that the Internet offers nowadays isthe Digital Libraries.

Arduous labor on digital libraries

For many years, the automated information ser-vices were limited to searching databases and

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*Corresponding author.E-mail addresses: lferia@ucol.mx, pmachuca@ucol.mx

(L.B. Feria).

1057-2317/$ - see front matter & 2004 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.doi:10.1016/j.iilr.2003.10.009

The International Information & Library Review (2004) 36, 177–183

bibliographic references. Nonetheless, the re-searcher was well as the student needs thedocument itself, not just the names and titles.Technology creates accessibility, and thus thistechnology offers the digital library. The user doesnot need a specific time or space to get thisinformation. This library occupies a huge virtualspace, complex and volatile, where there is noplace for rigidity, timidity, or things withoutimagination or adventure.

The University of Colima entered the world ofInformation Technologies (IT) in 1983 with thecreation of the General Office of Library Develop-ment in order to structure a library system thatsupported document and bibliographic informationto help teachers and researchers improve theiractivities. The Libraries Automation Software (SIA-BUC) was created by people from the University ofColima to meet the needs of cataloguing andclassifying bibliographical material. Now SIABUC isnot only a software used locally, but it also reachesthe national and international market. After 20years, this software has been acquired for morethan one thousand public, private and schoollibraries in Mexico and Latin America. This softwarehas been updated every 2 years, according to thenew requirements for classification and cataloguingof bibliographical information. Moreover, there is aconsultancy service, available via e-mail, phone orthe website http://siabuc.ucol.mx, from which theupdated versions can be downloaded.

Last year the National Council for Arts andCulture (CONACULTA) signed an agreement withthe University of Colima in order to automate morethan 7000 public libraries in the country, using thesoftware PROMETEO V, which is based on SIABUC. Itrepresents a major goal for the University ofColima, because of the importance of the projectand because each of the public libraries in thecountry will be automated by software made by thepersonnel of this institution.

The digital library of Iberoamerica andthe Caribbean

The electronic library is driven by two mainprinciples: the best possible access to informationand the use of technology to increase and admin-ister those resources (Dowlin, 1984, p. 2939). InLatin American and the Caribbean, although manycountries have restricted possibilities for access tothe Internet, it is possible to participate in an‘‘editorial industry of the twenty-first century,’’developed in Spanish, according to Latin American

characteristics, and addressed to audiences inMexico, Colombia and Argentina.

An electronic library has to be an organism ofcommunication. Its labor is defined according to itscapacity to communicate information and toestablish links among all the available sources,taking advantages of the new means of commu-nications that will permit easy accessibility. Thisnew library is structured to deliver the documentsto users in their own offices or houses.

It is with that objective that the Digital Library ofIberoamerica and the Caribbean was formed in1999 through the coordination of the RegionalCouncil of the UNESCO for Latin America. Thisinternational organization brought together a groupof Brazilian, Cuban and Mexican designers, librar-ians, programmers and experts in telecommunica-tions at four meetings in order to decide on sometechnological aspects of the project, the datastructure, the site and the methodology forcataloguing, digitizing and communicating amongservers.

As a result of these sessions, a draft was writtenin which it is explained how to transform docu-ments into electronic materials, catalogue thatinformation and make it available to the public.This methodology facilitates the transformation ofcopyright free collections into digitized documents,properly catalogued and classified according to themost recent standards for electronic informationmanaging (metadata). It provides for the creationof a client-server structure that allows access tothe documents via the Internet, as well as thepublication and maintenance of the correspondingsite.

Simultaneous to the preparation of the metho-dology, many Latin American libraries were invitedto join their collections and create a single holdingof 300 documents, including books, music, maga-zines and maps in digital format. After thesedocuments were classified, the search engine wasdeveloped. Among the ‘‘treasures’’ of the digitallibrary are:

* Novum Regesterum. Collective Catalogue fromthe Antique Found, centuries XV–XIX.

* Tabula Terre Nove. Abundant toponymy of thecoast of the New World, especially of what wenow know as Venezuela and Brazil.

* Die neuwe insein so hinder hispanien gegemorient ben dem land Indie Ligen. Abundanttoponymy of the description of the New World,using pictorial elements to depict geographicconditions.

* Jos !e Mart!ı. Obras completas. Provides for thedigitization and dissemination of many print

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documents, most of which date before the year1900, so important that they have to beconsidered essential for the study of any area.

* Un ami c’est bien douce chose, 3/4, Sol, 52.Musical scores of Brazilian music from the nine-teenth century, in pentagram format.

There is a second stage in the development ofthe great library: the official convocation to thenational libraries of Latin America and the Car-ibbean in order to unite their collections, improvelibrary services to the people and refine themethodology. Therefore, in October 2001 in thecity of Lisbon, the Executive Office of ABINIA(Iberoamerican National Libraries Association)signed an agreement with UNESCO regardingthe project. Among the goals of this projectare:

* Create a basic collection on the Internet ofapproximately 5000–6000 documents of all kinds(books, magazines, maps, music, videos, etc.)free of copyright from authors or editors,representative of the Iberoamerican and theCaribbean culture. Each country will donate100–200 documents.

* Index and write analytic descriptions for 1000representative web sites of the regional cultures(20–40 sites per country).

* Create the technological and methodologicalcapacity among the National Libraries of Iber-oamerica and the Caribbean to make their ownnational digital libraries. We have alreadytrained the personnel in those libraries tobecome specialists in this area.

* Allow the National Libraries to share theirknowledge about the ‘‘General Methodology ofthe Digital Library’’ with other libraries.

* Publish a CD-ROM collection of the 5000 digita-lized documents, which will constitute to the‘‘Basic Digital Collection of the Iberoamericanand the Caribbean Culture.’’

* Prepare version 2.0 of the ‘‘General Methodologyof the Digital Library,’’ which is now concluded,and that is tightly linked to the informationgiven in Fig. 1.

Metadata, data that describes the attributes ofother resources, deserves a special mention. It aidsfunctions such as data discovery, location, docu-mentation, evaluation and selection. This subject isnew but necessary to avoid the chaos in theinformation that is uploaded each day on theInternet. In this sense, the Guide for the Registra-tion of Information Resources was designed to bringabout uniformity in the registration of metadata forUNESCO’s project. Version 1.0 was created fromthe User’s Guide for the Registration of theResources of the Health Information Locator (LIS)made by BIREME (OPS/Brazil) with the participationof its experts and specialists from INFOMED (CubanSciences Academy). In the initial stage of theproject, metadata was based on an adaptation ofthe Government Information Locator Services(GILS), whereas for version 2.0, the set of GILSwas fully utilized, and the possibility of cross-referencing with MARC21 and Dublin Core wasconsidered.

As for the management of the digital collections,the experts group analyzed the available techno-logical options and the advantages of working withuniversal text and image formats. From this, amanual was created in which suggestions on topicssuch as how to conserve typography and style whenconverting documents between different formats

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Characteristics of the site http://bdigital.ucol.mx

Bilingual

Methodology 2.0 taken in three manuals: Recording of the information resources Digitization Ensuring protocol Z39.50 compliance Search engine in Windows and Linux Platforms Links to similar projects Input format and input software “Didactic model” library

How the Digital Library is Structured

Figure 1

The digital library of Iberoamerica and the Caribbean 179

were made. The use of a normalized networkprotocol provides the opportunity to provide accessto all libraries involved through a single system,albeit invisible to the final user, that will enable, atthe same time, the review of the information from36 libraries, a subset of them, or a single one,through searches for authors, titles and other data.

What has been achieved?

Among the goals achieved in the project is theGeneral Methodology of the Digital Library de-scribed in previous sections. Other points are thedevelopment of an instrument for the inventory ofthe informatics infrastructure in the region and thesigning in 2001 of a letter of commitment with theCervantes Virtual Library for collaboration. In 2002,a treaty was also signed with the Andine Commu-nity for the creation of a special collection wherecultural data from Peru, Bolivia, Colombia, Vene-zuela and Ecuador will be gathered. Currently, jointwork is being undertaken with the Latin AmericanCouncil of Social Sciences (CLACSO) so that theirdatabases may likewise be shared with the UNESCOLibrary.

What’s next?

UNESCO, besides continuing project managementand coordination of the experts group, will takeproper action in order to preserve the library’scollection on a set of CD-ROMs, work jointly withABINA and the national libraries of the LatinAmerican and Caribbean countries, suggest thecriteria for the selection of documents and evalu-ate the ongoing development of the project.

Diploma course on digital library

The graduate course in digital libraries deservesspecial mention, as it is tightly linked to the DigitalIberoamerican and Caribbean Library and to thecurriculum in NIT. Digital libraries are so innovativethat we are still learning how to create, organizeand make them accessible. Thus, it is necessary toopen places for education in this area.

Our experience in the making of the graduatecourse has been enriching. The preparation of theprograms, websites and materials for each subject,as well as their organization, was conducted by theUniversity of Colima. Once the official approval wassecured from the General Director of UNESCO, agroup of programmers was formed from the CIT todevelop a bilingual technological platform orientedto distance education.

The main objective of the graduate course was toprovide a solid basis for the joint integration of thedigital library, based on a normalized methodologyfor both the library and informatics personnel. Dueattention was given to the identification of thebilingual specialists who would constitute theprofessor team. Subsequently, the contents inEnglish and Spanish were integrated, so that byMarch 2002, the continental convocation was readyand the courses could begin by April 18 of that year.

For the program’s implementation, two stageswere considered: an initial distance educationphase and a subsequent phase in which thestudents attended classes. Hence, the course beganwith a 36 h load for each module in the distanceeducation phase and 16 h in attended classes over 8months.

With this course, 144 instructors from the 36national libraries from the states of Latin Americaand the Caribbean were trained. Each nationalinstitution designated four instructors to be quali-fied in specific basic operations: digitization, digitalinformation description, automation and managingof networks in digital libraries.

Progress

At this moment, we are in the final stage of the firstcycle: the integration of the collections to thenetwork. After each country has identified the 200documents to be catalogued, as well as the 100websites classified by the metadata methodology,they will be digitized and uploaded to the server.

While these actions are being accomplished, it isworth noting that the Carta Colima (Colima Accord)is one significant result of the first attended sessionof the graduate course. ‘‘Towards the DigitalIberoamerican and Caribbean Library’’ is an agree-ment that consists of a series of proposals that wereput forth in the meeting of September 20, 2002, bythe 25 attendants from 12 countries involved. Inthis agreement, the strong and weak points wereidentified and concrete actions proposed in orderto secure the excellence of the project.

The strong points range from the formal aspectsand institutional backup to the purely technologi-cal, like the standardization of tools, methodologyand interfaces. Other key benefits that wereidentified were the multiplying effect of theproject, the interdisciplinary cooperation, thepossibility of having access to documents fromany place, the training, the diffusion of culturalcollections and the option of increasing regionalcontents in Spanish, English, and Portuguese.

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Among the weaknesses, technical elements, suchas the heterogeneous informatics structure, thelack of a common vocabulary, the need for goodsupport to transmit the knowledge locally and theurgent need of perfecting a work methodology,were identified. Some participants also pointed tothe political, economic and technological uncer-tainty in their countries, plus the economicrestrictions on human and material resources thatmight impair the continuity of this process. Therepresentatives of the Anglophonic Caribbeanfound the preponderance of Spanish a weak point.

It was agreed that each national library wouldwork toward the management of human resources,hardware, software and financial support. BothUNESCO and the University of Colima wouldcollaborate with the institutions that were ingreater need, give online support, expand theproject to private institutions, create discussionlists and specialized forums, and establish aconcrete structure for the administration of theproject.

Participation and reflection at an individual levelwhen responding to the question ‘‘What can I do?’’resulted in interesting and enriching discussions.This led to commitments such as making good useof and diffusing the knowledge gathered, serving asa link between the institutions and the projectcoordinators, participating in the design andupgrading of the tools, continuing and fulfillingthe training of the personnel, and working towardsthe reduction of the weaknesses and increasing thestrengths of the components of the project.

Conclusions

Beyond the wires, computers and multimedia,there are the information and the ideas that areinterchanged through these media. In our continu-ing work, we have been linked in a very intimateway to the new technologies and the reality of theacademic environment. This has enabled us toobserve an increase in the traffic of data andinformation that deeply modifies how this informa-tion is managed in science and education. There-fore the integration of computer and informationnetworks has become an essential element ofincreasing the quality of the education providedat an institution.

It was in the Coordination for InformationTechnologies (CIT) that all these experiences wereconceived, managed and supported. These experi-ences comprise hundreds of personal, institutionaland local stories that are woven each day in its

installations. As good people from Colima, thesefuture engineers, teachers and designers like to tellthe stories with the same passion in which they livethem each day. That is another aspect that thequantitative measures of the technology-learningrelationship disregard: the capacity to make a storythat speaks of knowledge that has been assimilatedas a life experience. In the CIT, measurable resultsare obtained and there is a clear and realisticmission and viewpoint, but more than anythingelse, there are stories.

The CIT works for the future and sets itself long-term goals. The creation of products, like CD-ROMs,multimedia on the Web, software and websitedevelopment, as well as a range of informationservices, will continue to develop in many direc-tions. Due attention will be given to the develop-ment of a technological culture in the academicenvironment of the university, to the promotion oflines of research in the application of the technol-ogy, to the permanent training of the personnel innew hardware and software, to the telecommuni-cations and information services, and to thecontinuity of the collaborative projects at both anational and international level.

Based on the commitments assumed, and onthe new connections with organizations that areinterested in participating in the application oftechnology to learning, use of information andteleinformatics development, participation in pro-jects with other national and foreign institutionswill continue.

Appendix. Additional information aboutthe University of Colima and itstechnological resources

Here are some of the technological advances thatthe University of Colima has made in the last twodecades, improving the teaching–learning processand giving the students the opportunity of explor-ing other means of interaction via Internet. Nowa-days, the University of Colima has 22,000 students,and it is recognized as one of the most importantpublic universities in Mexico.

Two decades of technologicaldevelopment

Since 1983 the CIT has promoted successfully thetechnological development of the University ofColima. After 20 years of evolution, it has empow-ered the university net of teleinformatics, digital

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editions, educational multimedia and libraryservices.

University network

At this time, the CIT supports a network with fivenodes in the different campuses of the University ofColima with 3500 computers connected. The serverhas 90 digital lines that allow university usersaccess via modem.

All the design, installation and maintenance ofthe connections, administration of equipment andservice of communications (remote and localaccess to Internet, via modem and wireless), andservices such as development of electronic pagesand the administration of Web servers and theuniversity website, is done by alumni and studentsin technological areas from our university. Thesepupils have learned not only in their classrooms,but also with cables in hand.

Digital edition

One of most important projects of the CIT is itsUniversity Digital Editorial, which has consolidatedits products and gained national and internationalprestige. Its more than 200 titles of compact discs,however, do not show the millions of bytes ofinformation that have been digitalized, processedand catalogued.

All these acknowledgements, experiences andhuman sources will soon face a certification processwith the ISO. This will offer additional guaranteesof quality to the Center’s more than 100 customers,including government departments, internationalorganizations, universities, national libraries andprivate enterprises in many countries in LatinAmerica.

The certification responds to the necessity andmission of educating young students and profes-sionals, according to the requirements of themodern labor world. To pass from personal abilitiesto general knowledge that may be transmitted, toface quality evaluations, and to keep up a highlevel of personal and group work are importantadded values.

Education multimedia

Another program is the Development of MultimediaResources for Education Purposes, which workswith the coordination of the Technological Integra-

tion Program to incorporate technology into aca-demic activities, by means of the following:

(a) train the academic staff in order to incorporatetechnology into the process of teaching–learn-ing through courses and diploma courses;

(b) create educational scenarios that incorporatetechnology and a methodological proposal inorder to apply them;

(c) design and develop educational websites;(d) develop and administer the EDUC (Distance

Education Platform of the University of Coli-ma), which allows teacher–student interactionthrough different services, like the assignmentof tasks and homework, message inbox, onlinehelp and other academic resources; and

(e) create the Virtual Reality Center.

University Library

The university library system is fully automated.Through this department the students learn thingsthat no technology can do: to love books, to knowthem properly and to penetrate their contents,whether in traditional format, compact discs orimmaterial bytes on the Web.

In addition to collaborating directly and indir-ectly in the education of people from the uni-versity, the library hosts a program namedPasant!ıas, addressed to librarians and informationprofessionals of any nationality, who want to ‘‘learnand do’’ technological solutions by storing, retriev-ing and cataloguing the information. The trainingprograms include such topics as teleinformatics andthe electronic library.

There is also a very popular informatics programfor administration of libraries used in manycountries of Latin America that is created andconstantly updated by the University of Colima:SIABUC, Spanish-language software designed forWindows platforms, that is used by almost onethousand libraries in the region. Special attention isdue to a mega-project of library automation,CONACULTA, the objective of which is to automatemore than seven thousand libraries from the librarynetwork of this federal department.

The CIT has a dynamic role in the creation of newacademic projects relating to technology. One ofthose projects is the UNESCO Chair on NewInformation Technologies, the international impactof which is focused on the Digital Library DiplomaCourse. This chair is also working toward thecreation of the Digital Library of Iberoamerica andthe Caribbean that will join more than 5000 titlesof 36 national libraries of America. In addition, the

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Interfaces Forum on Digital Library takes placeevery year in Colima.

The UNESCO chair on new informationtechnologies

In 1995 the University of Colima was named as aRegional Center on New Information Technologiesfor Latin America and the Caribbean by UNESCO. Itwas then designated to take charge of the Chair onInformation Technologies in order to participate inthe education of professionals for the informationsociety, and to serve as an academic space forreflection and knowledge.

The UNESCO Chairs are created by this organiza-tion in order to give support to institutions thathave succeeded in their academic development,that have followed a particular standard, and thathave consolidated their goals for future projects.The project of the University of Colima wasapproved for the UNESCO Chair on New InformationTechnologies by the General Director of UNESCO,Sr. Koichiro Matsuura, in May 2001. It was set inmotion through the Diploma Course on DigitalLibrary that also serves as part of the Great DigitalLibrary of Iberoamerica and the Caribbean.

The official name of the program is the UNESCOChair on New Information Technologies (NIT), andits activities are mainly related to content anddevelopment of services and technologies ofinformation in the region. With respect to that,the Chair will promote the creation of courses,workshops, seminars, expert meetings, forums,congresses and diploma courses that offer spacesto exchange knowledge, analyze, critique anddebate, as well as search for solutions. This Chairalso aspires in the long term to the creation of a

master’s degree on NIT, addressed to informationprofessionals, that can provide them high-qualitytools and specialization. Another important topic ofthe Chair is the future publication of materials onthe area.

Specific objectives of the UNESCO chairon new information technologies

* Create a space for the consolidation of atechnological culture that takes into accountsuch different aspects as production, distribu-tion and consumption of information, based onthe use of the most recent innovations.

* Support the UNESCO programs related to the useof new information technologies and commu-nication in Latin America and the Caribbean,particularly those that contribute to the creationof the society of information in the region.

* Promote the exchange of knowledge though thecreation of national and international meetingsand workshops, as well as exchange programs forstudents, professors and researchers who wantto study new information technologies andcommunication.

* Motivate the use of new information technolo-gies and communication for the development ofthe Latin American and Caribbean Society.

References

Castells, M. (2001). La galaxia de internet: reflexiones sobreinternet empresa y sociedad. Espaa*n: Aret !e.

Dowlin, K. E. (1984). The electronic library: The promise and theprocess. New York: Neal-Schuman Publishers.

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