BIBLIOTECA VIRTUAL DEL PRINCIPADO DE ASTURIAS

The Virtual Library of the Principality of Asturias has been created for the more effective dissemination, through the Internet, and the digital conservation of the extremely rich bibliographic heritage conserved in the libraries of Asturias.

Through the allocation of metadata to the records, it will be possible to ensure the maximum visibility of each of the works scanned so that researchers and other interested parties can access these holdings over the Internet and the work(s) they wish to find directly by using the best-known search engines and browsers.

Scanning the documents allows us to contribute to the conservation of those whose state of repair make direct manipulation inadvisable, for example manuscripts or items printed on cellulose-based paper, a material whose acidic nature suffers serious impairment as time goes by.

The Virtual Library of the Principality of Asturias is a new step forward in a wide-ranging project for digital accessibility to the historical bibliographic collections of Asturias and is in line with the actions of the Ministry of Culture to promote the creation of within a standardized framework, so as to facilitate shared access to the Bibliographic Heritage of Spain.

Since 1988, the libraries in the Principality of Asturias have collaborated with the Collective Catalogue of Bibliographic Heritage and a large part of their historic holdings are listed on this major resource. The participation of Asturias in the Virtual Library of Bibliographical Heritage, the Virtual Library of Historic Press and, through the project presented here, in the Digital Library of Europe (now beginning to operate under the name Europeana or EuropeanaLocal), which will allow the conservation of the materials while giving them the maximum visibility.

The Virtual Library of the Principality of Asturias is confident that researchers and users in general will benefit from this service now made available to them.