The project grew out of several visits by Librarian of Congress James H.
Billington to Spain where he discussed creating an "America and Spain"
digital library with the cooperation of Spanish institutions. The intellectual
significance of this project resides in its capacity to mount on the Internet
unique materials in collections in Spain and in the United States, creating new
opportunities for research to a vastly increased public on both sides of the
Atlantic. The development of the Internet and the explosion of the World Wide Web in
the 1990s have offered a new and broadly based technology for establishing
contacts and exchanging information among individuals and institutions throughout the world. The Library of
Congress National Digital Library Program initiated in 1995, was one of the
large-scale efforts to use the Internet to disseminate high-quality educational
and cultural content-digital versions of manuscripts, maps, films, photographs,
sound recordings, and printed material-for use in schools and by the general
public. "America, Spain, and the Meeting of Frontiers" uses
technologies pioneered in the National Digital Library Program to tell the
parallel and interacting stories of Spain, the Anglo-American settlers and later
Americans through digitized images and texts of original source materials. The "America, Spain, and the Meeting of Frontiers" pilot is based
mostly on materials from the collections of the Library of Congress. The next
stage of the project will emphasize addition of material from other important
libraries and archives in Spain and the United States. Partner institutions will
add both collections and new thematic modules. Partner institutions in Spain, to date, include the Biblioteca Colombina y
Capitular (the Library of Hernando Colón and the Cathedral) in Seville and
the National Library in Madrid. The latter will be in charge of
recruiting other Spanish libraries as partners in this project. The Secretary of
State for Culture of Spain supports the project fully.
Library of
Congress