In September 2022, Lynn Silipigni Connaway, Sara Noguera, Francesc García Grimau and I went on a tour of libraries in Spain. In this post, I share some travel impressions giving food for thought. (A Spanish translation is available here).
This time, the experience had a corona twist to it
We arrived in Alicante, the third largest city on Spain’s Mediterranean coast, all from different directions – Zurich, Amsterdam, Barcelona, Jerez – and met again in person three years after COVID first hit. It was surreal to relive ingrained travel patterns at the airport, switching to discovery mode during the taxi ride to the hotel, figuring out how to use the hotel lift buttons, asking for the city map at the reception desk, checking the hotel room for cleanliness and comfort. This time, the experience had a corona twist to it: wearing masks (mandatory in Spanish transport); hailing taxis using an app; strolling the city’s main promenade – Passeig Esplanada d’Espanya, with its marble mosaic waves that move in tandem with the sea – normally a bustling place filled with street sellers until late in the evening, now, deserted. “This is not the Spain I remember!” exclaimed Lynn, “what happened to Spanish night life?”
Empty and sterile spaces. Virtualization taking over. The themes of the New Model Library.
It was nice to see each other again, face to face. The warmth, the laughs, the small talk – hours and hours – from breakfast to after-dinner walks. Sure, we had been in close contact online during the COVID lockdowns – and had probably been more productive without time wasted on commuting and travelling – but this felt like catch up time. Catching up on information lost with virtualization, information that only can be sensed through physical proximity: posture, gestures, appearance, dressing. Especially catching up with our not so new colleagues, Sara and Francesc, whom we had never met in person before.
Going all to way to Spain to visit a digital library
We visited the Biblioteca Virtual Miguel de Cervantes (BVMC) … “Wait a minute”, my manager laughed, “are you going all the way to Spain to visit a digital library?” The library provides online and computational access to digitized Hispanic cultural heritage. It is part of the Digital Humanities Lab of the University of Alicante. Gustavo Candela, responsable for the BVMC, welcomed us, together with colleagues from the technical and cataloging departments. They showed us around their Data Lab and onsite digitization facilities. We talked shop: about collections-as-data and their scholarly reuse. The news was just out that the Ministry of Science and Innovation will approve the budget allowing Spanish universities and research institutions to participate in the European research infrastructures of DARIAH and CLARIN – a long time wish. To top it off, the Virtual Library has been designated as a partner in the “Strategic Project for Economic Recovery and Transformation (PERTE) New Language Economy” (in Spanish), which is part of Spain’s recovery and resilience plan, following the crisis due to the pandemic. The idea is to reuse Hispanic cultural heritage collections for language modeling and to create large text-corpora to unleash the potential of the Spanish language – “la lengua de Cervantes” – and the co-official languages, for digital research and the digital economy.
Turning our workshop into a hybrid event
Enthused by their positive energy, we left Gustavo and his team for our next appointment: the New Model Library (NML) Workshop – generously hosted by José Pablo Gallo León, the Library Director of the University of Alicante. Pablo had written a thoughtful blog post in Blok de Bid – an important resource for library professionals in Spain – entitled: “Encontraré un camino o lo haré yo mismo: el estudio New Model Library de OCLC Research sobre las consecuencias de la pandemia”. The quote attributed to Hannibal when he crossed the Alps with elephants: “I shall either find a way or make one” – alludes to the New Model Library Report’s attempt to portray how libraries are finding a way forward during the pandemic, even when there is no pre-existing path. A very appropriate and nicely found allegory.
Conference hopping in Spain is far from back to the “pre-corona normal”
We were concerned about in-person attendance as conference hopping in Spain is far from back to the “pre-corona normal”. We offered a video-conferencing option – turning the workshop into a hybrid event – and to our pleasant surprise, there was a surge of last-minute registrations making remote presence equal to on-site presence. The attendees worked with the NML Learner Guide and grid to reflect on and discuss the areas of long-term change catalyzed by the pandemic. The attendees took the poster filled with post-it notes with them, to use for their library’s strategic planning. During the workshop, Pablo expressed his concerns:
“It is worrying that, during the pandemic, there was 40% less use of print and no increase in online usage levels to offset the need. Online, we are not as efficient. We need better skills and more ingenuity to build innovative online services.” Furthermore, he noted that in the past 25 years there have been too little resources for the renovation of library buildings in Spain. He pointed out: “This is an important problem. We need to rethink library spaces for collaborative uses. Generally speaking, collaboration needs more attention in Spain.”
In order to go hybrid, both the technology and the library building infrastructures need upgrading and remodeling.
We heard echoes of this during our library visits in Madrid. Ana Albertos, Deputy Director of the library at the Complutense University, said students don’t like using e-resources, they opt for more convenient solutions via the virtual campus. In order to go hybrid, both the technology and the library building infrastructures need upgrading and remodeling. Students want the library to be open again but they also demand more and different spaces. Ricardo Santos, Director of Technical Process, and Lourdes Alonso Viana, Head of Normalization Service at the Biblioteca Nacional de España were interested in managing equity in a workforce that is going hybrid, and the need for reskilling staff.
Virtualization at the Instituto Cervantes
During our whirlwind tour of Madrid, we also met with Yolanda de la Iglesia, responsible for Documentation in the library network of the Instituto Cervantes. She is setting up a new department for digital culture at her institution. She also mentioned the PERTE program, that will help fund the digitization and preservation of their cultural heritage collections and projects, that promote innovative uses of Spanish language resources. One such project is the “Map of Translations”, a data-visualization of book translations of Spanish and Latin American authors from the past 70 years. WorldCat is the best source for this kind of project, even if the metadata is not “complete” – a qualification that is becoming more challenging as metadata is increasingly reused for purposes other than what it was originally created for. Good food for thought for our next generation of metadata work!
We left Madrid, each in our own direction, fulfilled with the rich impressions, grateful for the hospitable people and places we visited and the convivial journey we had together.
In that short time, we were able to witness how both virtualization and space are forces of their own. They do not combine easily – as the term hybrid suggests.
Titia van der Werf is a Senior Program Officer in OCLC Research based in OCLC’s Leiden office. Titia coordinates and extends OCLC Research work throughout Europe and has special responsibilities for interactions with OCLC Research Library Partners in Europe. She represents OCLC in European and international library and cultural heritage venues.
