The Council on Library and Information Resources (CLIR) has granted the Harry Ransom Center a 2015 Digitizing Hidden Special Collections and Archives award to digitize more than 24,000 pages from the Gabriel García Márquez archive.
Funded by The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the CLIR award ensures that digitized content is made available to the public as easily and completely as possible. The $126,730 grant enables the Ransom Center to make available online thousands of images from the García Márquez archive.
Beginning in June 2016, the 18-month project, titled “Sharing ‘Gabo’ with the World: Building the Gabriel García Márquez Online Archive from His Papers at the Harry Ransom Center,” will involve scanning manuscripts, notebooks, scrapbooks, photographs and ephemera from the archive and making them accessible online. The materials date from 1950 through 2013.
“This project is notable for many reasons, including providing online access to copyright-protected archival material by one of the most revered literary figures of our time,” said Ransom Center Director Stephen Enniss. “There are few opportunities for researchers to access digitized archives of contemporary authors. This initiative is possible due to the enthusiastic support and endorsement of García Márquez’s family.”
The project will include the implementation of Mirador Image Viewer, which will allow researchers to see side-by-side comparisons of digitized texts within a single interface, helping them identify successive stages of revision among drafts. The freely accessible online archive will also serve as an introduction to those not accustomed to using archival materials, demonstrating the valuable resource that archives provide.
With the online archive, an international audience of students, educators and scholars will gain new perspectives on the work and life of García Márquez.
Finding aids in English and Spanish describe the García Márquez archive, which opened for research on Oct. 21. A small selection of digitized items from the García Márquez archive is currently available.
