Today, 30 June, is Spanish-Philippine Friendship Day, to celebrate the historic ties shared by the two nations.
The Philippines is an important part of this archival cooperation programme, which it has been part of since 2014.
During these years, several projects have been approved related to the project “Archivos del Mundo Filipino Ibérico” which aims to digitise in several phases the historical documentation of the Philippines found in different Ibero-American archives. The aim of these projects is to facilitate access to this important documentation for the Philippines for those interested who are unable to visit the archives in Latin America, Spain and Portugal in person.
You can consult the projects already carried out in the following links:
- 2015/055: Philippine Iberian Heritage Collection Gataloging Proyect.The project consisted mainly in the conservation of 1,148 images that were organised in a proper description and classification for their proper preservation and dissemination of the Spanish heritage collection in the Philippines. The process has been a bit slow as there are fewer Spanish-speaking Filipinos. For the initial phase of the project and due to the volume of records and documents, the support of AGNMex was needed for the digitisation. In this way, the description of the collection and the documentary heritage has been strengthened and access to the collection has been improved, as it can now also be consulted online.
- 2015/056: Philippine Iberian World Archives Project (1st phase). The project was divided as follows: 1) Implementation of a coordinated work plan, 2) Efficient access to civil registry information for the 338 RENAP offices, 3) Long-term preservation and conservation of 93,255 registry books, 4) Quickly accessible inventory and catalogue through a Semantic Web, 5) Improved classification, arrangement and description of books.
- 2015/110: Philippine Iberian World Archives Project. The project consisted mainly of the acquisition of original copies of records on the Philippines from the different archives in Ibero-America. A number of materials were selected and copied from religious archives in Mexico. These records are part of the Philippine-Iberian World Archives Project, which contributed to public access to the archives, improved the organisation, description, preservation and dissemination of the archival holdings.
It is important to mention that the project focused on the digitisation of documentation from the archives held in the General Archive of the Nation of Mexico.
Two more projects are currently underway: 2018/065, which focuses on the Franciscan fonds of Spain and 2018/067, on the fonds of the Archivo Histórico de Hacienda of the Archivo General de la Nación de México.
We wish a happy day to our colleagues in the Philippines!