Who we are > Background
The XIX Century Album cultural web site has come about as a result of a long process of digitalising and disseminating iconographic material .
2002: the Zumalakarregi Museum organised the Symposium called “ Engraving in the digital world” in Koldo Mitxelena cultural centre in San Sebastian (Gipuzkoa) in which the heads of important Spanish documentary centres took part – Madrid National Library, National Newspaper and Periodicals Library, Graphic Unit in the Library of Catalonia, Cartographic Service of Andalusia, University of Extremadura, Sancho el Sabio Foundation from Vitoria, General Archive of Navarre, Koldo Mitxelena Cultural Centre and Zumalakarregi Museum–. This was the starting point for the search of practical solutions in picture digitalisation matters.
We learned about some extremely interesting experiences and we prepared a report on the state of things as far as collections of 19 th century engravings were concerned.
As a continuation of the aforementioned event, we feel it would be a good idea to go into digitalisation in greater depth in order to take advantage of the work carried out until then.
We came to the conclusion that this could be an interesting point in time to take measures that will lead us to work offer a better information access to citizens.
2003: Zumalakarregi Museum published the minutes of the Symposium in its “Historical Studies, 6” collection.
2004: we launched the prototype that will enable us to check the operational capacity of the cultural web site in order to provide users with a database with 1.500 pictures.
The prototype includes 250 pictures (about 50 from each documentary centre) and allows us to check effectiveness as far as searches and interactivity with the user are concerned.
One of the main features of this project consists of its growth possibilities, as each cultural centre that takes part in it will be able to gradually add material.
2005: Execution and public presentation.
