What it is

Digital Memory of Catalonia (MDC) is a cooperative open-access repository containing digitized collections related to Catalonia and its heritage. It is promoted by the universities of Catalonia and the Biblioteca de Catalunya, coordinated by the Consorci de Serveis Universitaris de Catalunya (CSUC) with the participation of other Catalan institutions.

The main purpose of the MDC is to increase the visibility and consultation of the special and heritage collections of libraries in Catalonia. It prioritizes the inclusion of the most unique documents, and those likely to be consulted by a larger number of users. This goal is achieved due to the following objectives:

Promoting the Catalan heritage digitization

Highlighting some collections which, due to their rarity or physical condition, are restricted or difficult to access.

Being the interface that gathers all the heritage and allows querying it all at once

Providing the tools for its preservation

This repository is open to collaboration for the libraries and archives of Catalonia that want to display their digitized special collections related to Catalonia or their heritage with predominantly graphic documents. Priority is given to the incorporation of the most unique and rare documents, as well as those capable of being accessed by a larger number of users.

The digitization of documents is carried out by the institutions themselves that should do it according to the parameters and criteria contained in the "Standards for digitization: minimum requirements" that the "Learning, Research and Open Science area" from CSUC updates regularly. The incorporation of documents is done after considering if any intellectual property rights may affect their exploitation.

The repository includes digital copies of photographs, drawings, maps, posters, pamphlets, incunabula and many other items with a total of over three million documents related to Catalonia from different institutions like universities, specialized libraries, archives, etc.

If you are an institution with the mentioned characteristics, with mainly graphic patrimonial collection, and want to participate in the MDC, you will need to follow the next steps:

Ask formally for the inclusion to the repository via mdc@csuc.cat

Sign the collaboration agreement with CSUC

Take charge of the intellectual property rights

Assume the digitization and the commitment to comply with the Standards of digitization: minimum requirements

Customize the collection space and add the information for the documents and the full text.

Assume the economic cost of the registry and in case the occupation of the documents is higher than 2GB (2.000 images approx.), the cost of hosting and maintenance established in the “Fares” document that can be found in the CSUC webpage

Currently, the repository contains such important collections as the first images of the albino gorilla "Floquet de Neu" playing in its natural environment at the Ikunde Centre in Equatorial Guinea, images about Catalan farmhouses from the beginning of the twentieth century and collections related to the political, economic, social and cultural events that took place during the Spanish Civil War.

Users can search from the homepage itself, and the obtained results will be sorted according to their typology and origin (provided that they are not hosted at the MDC). Categories are as follows: text collections, image and audiovisuals collections, the Cartographic and Geological Institute of Catalonia, and the Digital Patrimonial Library of the UB. From the “Collections” tab, users can access all the public collections in the MDC sorted according to different criteria (alphabetic list, topics and typologies). They also get access to the list of next admissions and that of other collections not included in the MDC but with a similar nature.

The "Institutions" tab allows users to sort them in a list format showing all the collections of each institution, or locating them geographically within a map. Specific applications, designed to provide collections of added value, are on the homepage. Some remarkable examples are: the location of images of the Photographic Archive of the Centre Excursionista de Catalunya or the citizen collaboration project "Transcriu-me!!", whose objective is to transcribe old documents and improve their accessibility.

The MDC was set up in late 2006 in the CONTENTdm software by OCLC. Since June 2018 it has been hosted in the cloud. It uses Linked Open Data. There has been some local developments like the possibility of viewing the search results in collections of images, texts, or periodicals. The images meet international standards of description (Dublin Core, METS, PREMIS) and interoperability (OAI-PMH), which has made it possible to increase their visibility by offering them jointly with other national and international repositories such as Europeana (European portal for access to cultural collections), Hispana (Spanish portal of digital heritage), Catalònica (a portal that provides a window to the digital collections of Catalunya), and OAIster (union catalog). MDC collections are cataloged in CCUC (University Union Catalogue of Catalonia). They are also accessible on the Special Collections page.

The dissemination of the MDC documents can be seen in the image below:

In 2011, 2012 and 2013, several MDC participating institutions got the support from Ministerio de Educación, Cultura y Deporte to digitize collections.

If you want to use any image included in MDC, check the information on "Gestió dels drets" (“Management rights") found on the page that describes the document or send an email to the institution that manages the collection.

If you want to contribute to MDC or to receive more information, send an email to mdc@csuc.cat.