Ana Yuri Ramírez-Molina, Alberto Castro Thompson, Lisandro Pablo Olivares, Coordinación de Innovación y Estrategia Digital de la Biblioteca Nacional de México.
Due to the events of the pandemic, in Mexico and all around the world, people have modified the way they work and communicate and have turned to new technologies that facilitate digital connections. These technologies are important in the teaching and learning process and can have a significant social impact if used in education as a means of achieving social development. Institutions in charge of safeguarding the knowledge generated by the society play a key role in this permanent process of human development, as they are holding responsibility of ensuring continuity of digital heritage materials as long as they are needed.
The National Library of Mexico (BNM) is custodian of the invaluable digital heritage of the nation, consisting of a variety of books, manuscripts, special collections, periodical publications; audios and videos; in a wide spectrum of different formats. The mission of the BNM is integrating, guarding, preserving and making available for consultation, the collections it safeguards, including electronic and digital resources received by Legal Deposit, donation and those produced by the institution through digitization processes. This mission will be fulfilled in terms of digital preservation only if authenticity, reliability, and accessibility of digital objects can be ensured.
In order to add value, promote and facilitate the reliable management of the library's digital collections, the BNM is working actively, processing digital objects for long-term preservation and access in different areas of the institution. These areas include organisational documents, technological infrastructure, software development and knowledge exchange.
With the development of strategies, policies, and procedures, the BNM aims to govern the library’s digital collections management activities. This will ensure well-documented workflows; controlled production, storage, and dissemination processes; improve the planning, decision-making and execution of preservation programs; and will serve in mitigating risks and maintaining operational consistency.
Technological infrastructure has been set up to facilitate sending, storage, management and dissemination of digital objects already in the library as part of an active program for the update of infrastructure.
Software development is an important piece in our digital preservation strategy. The staff of technology at the BNM has created customized software systems, tools and documentation to cover and support the main processes of digitization, management and dissemination of collections in the two main platforms for the purpose, Biblioteca Nacional Digital de México and Hemeroteca Nacional Digital de México. Currently, one of the main activities is the software requirements specification for the platform of the national Legal Deposit which will be the main entry point for receiving editorial publications.
In the search of a better understanding of digital preservation, the BNM continues breaking down organisational and technological barriers, working with the Grupo de Preservación Digital (@preservaDigital), the multidisciplinary and interinstitutional group focused on supporting research and training in digital preservation.