“The Miguel Cervantes Digital Library: The Hispanic
Voice on the WEB”
Andrés
Pedreño
Universidad de Alicante, Spain
This paper describes the philosophy behind what represents one of the most
ambitious projects of its kind ever to have been undertaken in the
Spanish-speaking world: The Miguel Cervantes Digital Library (http://cervantesvirtual.com/). It explains the reasons behind its
creation, the private-public sector alliance which has made it possible, and the
new ground being explored by its creators in terms of innovative application of
digital methods and of new services it offers to its audience world-wide.
The Miguel Cervantes Digital Library is the result of a unique collaboration
between Alicante University and Spain's biggest bank, the Banco Santander
Central Hispano who have joined forces to create the world's biggest digital
library containing Spanish-speaking works. It represents an example of
successful partnership between university and business, with the Santandar
Central Hispano Bank providing complete sponsorship for the full development of
the project. The University, on the other hand, provides the academic expertise,
technological know-how and qualified workforce necessary to fulfil objectives
and ensures international use of the Library's resources by way of collaboration
agreements with universities and institutions all over the world. The paper will
address the issue of this partnering of academia and private enterprise as a
case study of how two vastly different institutions have successfully worked
together in the overall management and vision of a large, global project.
The Miguel Cervantes Digital Library hopes to act as inspiration to other
non-English speaking cultures to create their own novel digital tools which can
be used by a multiracial and multilingual student and academic community of
Internet users world-wide. Far from being a static collection of digitised
books, the Library is envisaged as a vehicle for the Hispanic academy to promote
their works, as a window to Hispanic literature and culture for scholars of
Hispanic languages and cultures, and as a voice for the Hispanic university
community world-wide. The actual content of the Library reflects this ambition
as it includes sections such as:
- the digital publication of theses, which acts as a window to Hispanic research and a forum of academic debates
- a voice library with quality recordings of top Hispanic voices who have volunteered to recite one of the Library's most visited works. Well known Hispanic poets and authors also take part in this section, reciting parts of their own work
- a directory with over 3000 links to digital Hispanic resources and to outstanding digital collections, libraries and technology-related resources. All the links have a full explanation in Spanish for Hispanic users unfamiliar with the potential of the Web for study and research
- personalised pages on Hispanic authors, debate forums, its own electronic news bulletin, and a facility enabling readers, collectors and editors to interact and locate rare books
- initiatives aimed at bringing together "the Old" (printed material) and "the New" (electronically produced works). As well as a section called "Trueque" which brings together publishers, booksellers, collectors and readers in an attempt to locate rare and out-of-print editions, the project envisages traditional publication of text-books and critical studies accompanied by interactive electronic versions available in the Miguel Cervantes Digital Library "Research" section
- a section where the Library encourages and publishes in its pages the results of research projects and collaborations related to educational software development undertaken in or considered to be of interest to the Hispanic world. With the help of Latin-American governments and universities, we aim to equip villages, schools and communities with educational, literary and cultural material which, without modern technology, would be beyond their reach.