Helping to preserve and share Oaxaca's history

SDSU has a history of partnerships with cultural heritage organizations in Mexico. While our partnerships with organizations such as the Archivo Historico in Tijuana and the Biblioteca de Investigación Juan de Córdoba in Oaxaca are well established, we have recently embarked on a new project with the Fray Francisco Burgoa library in Oaxaca. The Burgoa holds a one-of-a-kind collection of 19th and early 20th century newspapers from the Oaxaca region. The collection is well known and heavily consulted. Unfortunately, the issues were folded and bound into unwieldy volumes resulting in serious damage to the fragile paper. The staff at the Burgoa have embarked on a preservation and digitization program. They are stabilizing the paper and creating high quality digital images, but they have no means of displaying the newspapers online. On our part, SDSU is working to compile the images, create bilingual metadata and make them accessible through our online repository, Archipelago. The collaboration will allow more researchers to access the historic material without damaging the fragile originals. This poster outlines and illustrates our cross border collaboration.