Biblioteca Digital Hispánica
Consult Biblioteca Digital Hispánica
The Biblioteca Digital Hispánica is the digital library of Biblioteca Nacional de España. It provides free access to thousands of digitised documents, including printed books, manuscripts, drawings, engravings, pamphlets, posters, photographs, maps, atlases, music scores, historic newspapers and magazines and audio recordings.
Created in 2008, the objectives of the Biblioteca Digital Hispánica are:
- To disseminate Spanish cultural heritage while assuring that our cultural legacy is protected and safeguarded.
- To fulfil the commitment made with the European Union to help in the creation of the future European Digital Library, which will offer unique and multilingual online access to holdings in European cultural institutions.
- To become an essential tool for fostering research into our culture by enabling consultation of the digitized collections for scholars and hispanicists from all over the world without having to travel to Madrid.
- To offer a channel of cooperation with other Spanish and Latin American libraries.
The Digitisation of BDH
Systematic digitisation is today more than just a project; it is a process that affects almost all Library departments and areas.
Today, the whole process, from deciding which works to digitise to making these accessible from the portal, has been implemented in nearly all the different services of the Library.
Broadly speaking, this process comprises:
- Selecting materials, in accordance with different criteria;
- Selecting the most suitable copy for scanning, again in keeping with different principles of conservation and suitability;
- Updating cataloguing rules, to adapt them to current standards;
- Digitising and generating master and derivative copies, and metadata and image quality control;
- Uploading to the digital object manager, indexing in the portal search engine and incorporating the finished document into the Biblioteca Digital Hispánica interface;
- link between the bibliographic record in the catalog and the digitized document in the Biblioteca Digital Hispánica.
BNE digitazation lines
The institution's digitalization strategic lines are established based on basic selection criteria. Taking into account one of the main objectives of digitization, dissemination, a first filter is established, which is that of those funds that are in the public domain, that is, they 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, works of heritage value, emblematic, thematic interest, bibliographical, documentary value and relevance are chosen. It is also intended to show a reflection of the variety of the documentary typology existing in the institution. Their state of conservation is also important, so works that are damaged are prioritized as a measure to preserve the originals (for example, the acid background or the audiovisual background).
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 digitization of bibliographic heritage.
Learn more about the BNE digitazation lines
BNE cooperation on digitalization
National Cooperation
Hispana
The digital collection directory and builder of the Ministry of Culture. It comprises archive, library and museum collections, including the digital collection of the 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 terms of digitization of the different administrations and entities that own bibliographic heritage during the next 5 years.
Casa del Libro
Some emblematic works in the Biblioteca Digital Hispánica are now available free of charge on the Casa del Libro website and on TAGUS reading applications.
Interactive books
Under its collaboration agreement with Telefónica, Don Quixote and Leonardo da Vinci's Madrid Codices became interactive works in 2010 and 2012, respectively. Furthermore, the digital versions of these works include a large volume of multimedia material and functionalities.
International cooperation
Europeana
The access point to millions of digital resources from archives, museums, libraries and other cultural institutions from all over Europe. It is currently the most important project for disseminating Europe's cultural heritage.
World Digital Library
Sponsored by the Unesco, it brings together and provides access to emblematic digital contents that are representative of cultures from all over the world. It includes some of the best works in the Biblioteca Digital Hispánica.
Digital library of the Ibero-American Heritage (BDPI)
The BDPI gathers digital resources from Ibero-American national libraries (belonging to ABINIA) into a single portal. It includes all types of materials, accessible through a multilingual portal designed and developed by the Biblioteca Nacional de España, the project co-ordinator.
The Keepers Registry
The Biblioteca Nacional de España is part of the Keepers Registry service. This service provides information on those archival agencies that act as long-term conservators of the published digital content of electronic serials. It allows you to know which entity is taking care of certain digital magazines, how and under what conditions of access.
To meet this objective, the BNE will periodically provide the ISSN International Center with metadata about its contents in the Digital Newspaper Library for inclusion in Keepers Registry.
Documents / Links of interest