(Oranjestad)—This week marks an important development in the preservation of the Aruban history and a step forward into modernizing the island. For the first time ever, the entire history of Aruba is now backed up on the Internet Archive.
In collaboration with the National Library of Aruba (BNA), the non-profit organization was able to digitize various types of documents pertaining to the history of Aruba, including those from the national library itself, along with the National Archives (ANA), the archeological museum of Aruba (MANA) and the University of Aruba (UA), among others.
The project started back in 2018, when Stacy Argondizzo—a long-time visitor—began to find interest in the preservation of the island’s history. Although Aruba lies outside of the hurricane belt, we are still vulnerable for natural disaster, which is very likely to end in a destruction of our preserved physical historical documents. It is for this reason that Argondizzo reached out to Peter Scholing, an information specialist at the national library. Together, using Aruba’s own scanning equipment along with the software technology provided by the Internet Archives to organize the collection, they created a huge online deposit of our island’s most precious history.
The collection holds 101,376 items so far. To compare this with the population of Aruba, it would amount to one collection item for every citizen of Aruba. This includes 40,000 documents, 60,000 images and seven 3D objects.
The Aruban history is something that we cherish and love to promote, both to the younger generation and our lovely visitors. It’s for this reason that the digitization and preservation of our documents act as not only a precautionary move, but also one that further promotes—and in some ways—modernizes our history.
You can access digital documents of Aruban history through the website of the national library of Aruba, https://www.bibliotecanacional.aw/pages/.
