What is HISPANA?
Hispana is the access portal to Spanish digital heritage and the national content aggregator to Europeana.
It therefore has two objectives:
- Provide access to Spanish cultural and scientific heritage. To do this, it collects and makes accessible the metadata of digital objects, allowing these objects to be viewed through links that lead to the pages of the proprietary institutions ”.
- Add the content of those institutions that want it to Europeana, the European digital library, increasing the visibility and reuse of the collections.
Hispana tries, in this way, to benefit both the holders of said digital objects and the general public.
The collections. A common strategy
Hispana brings together the digital collections of Spanish archives, libraries and museums. Among them are the institutional repositories of Spanish universities and the digital libraries of the Autonomous Communities, which offer access to growing sets of all kinds of materials (manuscripts, printed books, photographs, maps...) of the Spanish bibliographic heritage.
In operation since March 2006, it is the first service of this type developed in Spain and allows the establishment of a common strategy between the different administrations, private entities and the Ministry of Culture and Sports.
Hispana applies European regulations on digitization, online accessibility of cultural material and reuse of public sector information (more information at HispanaPro). In particular, of the Commission Recommendation (EU) 2021/1970 of November 10, 2021, on a common European data space for cultural heritage that enhances the interaction between aggregators and experts working in this field. This common data space will build on Europeana's current strategy, which aims to empower institutions responsible for cultural heritage in their digital transformation. The national and domain or thematic aggregators thus acquire a fundamental role, at national and European level, for which reason Member States are invited to reinforce their support for them in order to contribute to the common European data space for heritage. cultural.
In addition, Hispana complies with the provisions of Real Decreto Legislativo 1/1996, of April 12, which approves the revised text of the Intellectual Property Law and Real Decreto-Ley 24/2021: New regulations on copyright and the like in the digital single market, and is also aligned with the Sustainable Development Goals of the 2030 Agenda.
How cultural institutions participate in Hispana
There are two levels of participation:
* Level 1: Registration and contribution of records to Hispana.
At this first level, upon registration, your institution will be displayed in the Hispana directory, along with a link to your collection. In addition, your records will be collected, so they will be locatable and accessible from Hispana. All of this will provide greater visibility of the collection and facilitate access to its resources.
In order to reach this level, it will be necessary for you to fill in the following form and sign the participation agreement that comes in the annex (in the format you prefer), and send it to the address indicated therein.
- Download registration form in HISPANA (.docx format– Microsoft Word)
- Download registration form in HISPANA (.dot format– Open office)
* Level 2: Contribution of records to HISPANA
The next participation consists of the contribution of their collections to Europeana. For this, the OAI repository must serve the records in EDM (Europeana Data Model) format.
See How to contribute metadata to Europeana.
In addition, your institution must sign the DEA (Data Exchange Agreement) with Europeana, through an agreement with the Ministry of Culture and Sports. In this case, an agreement template would be sent for the institution to fill in its data.
If you have any questions about how to participate in Hispana, contact us.
Likewise, we invite you to visit the HISPANAPRO website, where we offer professional resources for the Hispana provider community.