BNE Digital
BNE Digital is the platform for access to digital heritage of the National Library of Spain National Library. A unique and simultaneous point of entry to the rich and varied digital funds that the BNE keeps within its digital aspect, inseparable and complementary to its physical reality. BNE Digital brings together everything from the great digitised historical works to audiobooks, ePubs and contemporary books published in Spain, of which the Library keeps its digital copies. All this online collection, with works of all ages and types, finds its place here, at the disposal of the citizens.
The project of integration of digital collections in BNE Digital was born in October 2025 and is a milestone in the history of the National Library of Spain, being the largest digital library in Spain and one of the largest digital collections in the world.
As a unique gateway to the Library’s digital assets, BNE Digital is a valuable tool for research, learning, teaching and the reuse of digital cultural heritage. It also represents the online cultural memory of our country, allowing citizens to search and discover the Spanish digital heritage, which the Library makes available to present and future generations.
Digitization in the BNE
Systematic digitalization is today, more than a project, a process that affects almost all departments and areas of the Library.
To this day, the tasks involved from deciding what is going to be digitized until it is finally accessible on the portal have been incorporated almost fully into all the routines of the different Library Services.
Broadly speaking, this process comprises:
- selection of materials, according to different criteria;
- selection of the specimen most suitable for digitisation, again according to different principles of conservation and suitability;
- review of the cataloguing, to bring it into line with current standards;
- digitalisation and generation of masters and derivatives, and quality control of metadata and images;
- load in the digital object manager, indexing in the search engine of the portal and incorporation into the interface of Biblioteca Digital Hispánica;
- link between the bibliographic record in the catalogue and the digitized document in Biblioteca Digital Hispánica.
BNE Digitization Lines
The institution’s strategic lines of digitisation are established on the basis of basic selection criteria. In response to one of the main objectives of digitalization, dissemination, a first filter is established, which is that of those funds that are in the public domain, that is, are free of copyright. Within this set, there are several selection criteria that determine the strategic lines of digitization of the Library. On the one hand, the works of patrimonial value, emblematic, of thematic interest, bibliographic value, documentary and relevance are chosen. It also tries to show a reflection of the variety of the documentary typology existing in the institution. Its state of conservation is also important, so that works that are damaged are prioritized as a measure of preservation of the originals (for example, the acid fund or the audiovisual fund).
Finally, there is a national digitization strategy for the coming years, created in the Working Group for the National Digitization Strategy of the Library Cooperation Council , which aims to coordinate digitizations, technical and organizational procedures and promote joint actions and cooperative projects in the field of the digitization of bibliographic heritage.
Digital born heritage
Since 2015, the National Library of Spain has gathered a valuable collection of digital works, the result of the collaboration and commitment of the publishers to the legal deposit regulations. Thanks to this, the preservation of the digital heritage is guaranteed for future generations.
This collection includes a wide variety of materials: e-books (fiction, outreach and academic), audiobooks, AENOR standards, podcasts, serial publications, as well as digital music and videos.
In addition, digital copies prior to the printing of works deposited in physical format, both monographs and serial publications, have also been incorporated since 2023. These digital versions allow conservation centers to have an electronic copy, facilitating the dissemination of heritage for research and improving the preservation of printed originals.
Works with current copyright can be consulted exclusively in the National Library of Spain and in the network of conservation centers of the autonomous communities.
BNE cooperation in digitisation
National cooperation
Hispanic
Directory and collector of digital collections of the Ministry of Culture. It integrates the collections of archives, libraries and museums, and among them, the digital collection of Biblioteca Digital Hispánica.
National Strategy for the Digitization of Bibliographic Heritage
The National Library of Spain collaborates in the Working Group for the National Strategy for the Digitization of Bibliographic Heritage, whose main objective is to prepare and publish a document that defines the basic lines that must guide the actions in the field of digitization of the different administrations and entities holding bibliographic heritage during the next 5 years.
House of the Book
Some emblematic works of Biblioteca Digital Hispánica are already available free of charge on the Casa del Libro website and in the TAGUS reading applications.
Interactive books
Thanks to the collaboration with Telefónica, El Quijote in 2010 and the Codices Madrid of Leonardo da Vinci in 2012 became interactive. They include, in addition to the digital version of the works, numerous multimedia materials and functionalities.
International cooperation
Europeana
Unique access point to millions of digital resources from archives, museums, libraries and other cultural institutions across Europe. It is currently the most important project for the dissemination of the European digital cultural heritage.
World Digital Library
Powered by UNESCO, it gathers and provides access to emblematic and representative digital content from cultures around the world. It includes some of the most notable works of Biblioteca Digital Hispánica.
Digital Library of Ibero-American Heritage (BDPI)
It integrates in the same portal digital resources of Ibero-American national libraries (members of ABINIA). It includes all kinds of materials, accessible from a multilingual portal designed and developed by the National Library of Spain, coordinator of the project.
The Keepers Registry
The National Library of Spain is part of the Keepers Registry service. This service provides information on those archiving agencies that act as long-term curators of published digital content from electronic serial publications. It allows you to know which entity is taking care of certain digital magazines, how and under what conditions of access.
To meet this goal, the BNE will regularly provide the ISSN International Center with metadata about its contents in the Digital Archive for inclusion in the Keepers Registry.
Documents / Links of interest