PARES (Portal de Archivos Españoles)
Published on 23 January 2019
Spain
Castilla y León
This is the good practice's implementation level. It can be national, regional or local.
About this good practice
The Spanish Archives Portal is the third generation in the computerization of the State Archives. It is intended to provide citizens and researchers with integrated on-line access to the archival databases of the eight state general archives distributed across Spain, while facsimiles or digital versions of the documents are added to the archival description catalogue. At the same time, PARES is producing a line of tools for electronic management of the public services offered in the network of the State Archives to researchers and members of the public visiting the archive in person. And thirdly, PARES is an archival platform intended to promote the whole range of possible dissemination strategies. The platform today is fundamentally a repository for the creation, management and dissemination of historical records. However, also it is involved in a process of transformation to accommodate the concepts of “open files” and web 2.0 principles. To do this, different courses of action are being pursued such as converting PARES into an OAI-PMH repository, which allows interoperability with other archival information systems, both Spanish and international, and the development of new tools and standards for the incorporating multilingual access Points.
Resources needed
The draft Budget of 2019 includes 600,000 euros to resume the plan of digitization of files. The draft General State Budgets for 2019, which the Government has not yet transferred to Congress, includes two items of 300,000 euros each to resume the description and digitization plans.
Evidence of success
There are currently 8,614,519 descriptive records available online, with 34,135,911 images of documents, which were subject during last year out of a total of 1,174,343 work sessions. The set of these sessions correspond to 635,191 habitual users of PARES and the rest to 539,182 new users, who consulted 23,701,653 of visited pages. These figures indicate the importance of this platform both in Europe and in America, since its use has been widespread in most university and research institutions.
Potential for learning or transfer
Double navigation strategy for documents and authorities.
Perform multilingual searches in the languages of the Spanish, French and English, by authorities and access points.
Access to information: description and digital facsimile.
List the results with new ways to reorder the records and filters by facets.
Access to the researcher's agenda in which each user, after registration, can save the results of their searches, documents or authority records.
Share descriptive records, digital images and results lists in social networks.
Permanent links to records and images.
The interface also facilitates access to archival resources for professionals and researchers, thematic databases, virtual exhibitions, microsites, news of the sector, the collective catalog of the file library network, etc., so it becomes a tool essential for archivists and people interested in the Spanish Documentary Heritage.
Perform multilingual searches in the languages of the Spanish, French and English, by authorities and access points.
Access to information: description and digital facsimile.
List the results with new ways to reorder the records and filters by facets.
Access to the researcher's agenda in which each user, after registration, can save the results of their searches, documents or authority records.
Share descriptive records, digital images and results lists in social networks.
Permanent links to records and images.
The interface also facilitates access to archival resources for professionals and researchers, thematic databases, virtual exhibitions, microsites, news of the sector, the collective catalog of the file library network, etc., so it becomes a tool essential for archivists and people interested in the Spanish Documentary Heritage.
Further information
Website
Good practice owner
You can contact the good practice owner below for more detailed information.
Organisation
Ministerio de Cultura y Deporte
Spain
Castilla y León
Contact
Historiador