Recently, Aruba’s platform Coleccion Aruba has been featured in international news. The authorities have informed that Ms. Ali Rogin, a reporter and correspondent for PBS News, produced a news segment about how climate change is affecting small, vulnerable nations.
For this occasion, she focused on Tuvalu, an island nation consisting of seven islands in the Pacific that is slowly disappearing. At the same time, Ms. Rogin highlighted the digital portal Coleccion Aruba, emphasizing the importance of preserving archives, documents, and recordings that are cultural heritages vulnerable to the effects of climate change.
Coleccion.aw is the largest digital archive in Papiamento and provides free access to digital archives of documents, photos, videos, and recordings from Aruba.
Effects of Climate Change
For the Tuvalu segment, the reporter interviewed a Minister of Foreign Affairs, Mr. Simon Kofe, and a United Nations representative from Tuvalu, Mr. Tapugao Falefou, who explained the challenges this small country faces due to climate change. Ms. Rogin explained that climate change not only damages infrastructure but also poses a danger to archives, documents, and other artifacts, as these can be destroyed, leading to the loss of an important part of a country’s general and cultural history.
Importance of Document Digitization
During the over six-minute recording, the reporter interviewed Ms. Kate Knibbs, who wrote an article about the collaboration between Coleccion Aruba and Internet Archive, the digital platform that hosts Coleccion Aruba. Ms. Knibbs elaborated on the importance of digitizing documents.
Coleccion Aruba
For the Coleccion Aruba part, the PBS News reporter interviewed Mr. Peter Scholing, a researcher at the National Library of Aruba and the initiator of Coleccion Aruba, as well as historian and author Dr. Adi Martis.
Mr. Scholing explained why it is important to preserve cultural heritage digitally, especially now with rising temperatures due to climate change. Dr. Martis provided information on how useful Coleccion Aruba is for his research, for instance, when he was investigating slavery in Aruba.
You can watch the news segment here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3cSL2xFNOLU.
