Digitalization here and there.

While reading Historians’ archival research looks quite different in the digital age by J. Abrams, I  meditated on my own circumstance. The author reflects on the work of archivists in times of digitization, although his concerns largely refer to the work of archiving in the future, it made me think about my present and the great benefits that the digitization of archives has brought us Central American researchers. I understand that the author is based on his experience from the technologically developed world. However, in the less developed regions of the world, the digitization of archives has opened the door to documents that were previously impossible to access, except at great financial expense, which in many cases are in the pockets of the researcher.

Large quantities of documents from the colonial period were extracted from countries, even in some cases in a violent or deceitful manner. Many of those documents are lost in private collections, only God knows where. However, others are found in important repositories in the United States, such as the library of the University of Texas in Austin, the Hispanic Society in New York, and others. The work, still partial, that these institutions have done to digitize these documents, has meant great advances for researchers in Latin America who no longer need to physically travel to the archive to access the documents. The amount of digitized material is still minimal, however, it is already significant.

On the other hand, I return to my personal circumstance. The article has made me think about all that other material that still, fortunately, remains in the original countries, but whose archivists work with very limited resources, and the dream of digitization is still distant on the horizon For these professionals, although the future already outlines the questions that the author raises in his article, their greatest concern is trying to keep pace with a world that advances rapidly, but that within the walls of its archive, seems to slow down.