Serie N° 109: Hackear las bibliotecas.

Abstract

Through the historical evolution of libraries, the author tries to demonstrate that, since the birth of the first libraries and archives, preservation and collection were a fundamental part of their work and that access to and generation of new knowledge, although part of this process, were not part of the librarians’ imaginary in an obvious way. Paraphrasing John Palfrey points out that the “ethos” of the hacker, in a good sense, is the ability to deconstruct and rebuild information systems. In the case of libraries, this task would involve figuring out how to dismantle conventional tasks and rearticulate them into services supported by the facilities of the digital age. A#er reviewing the concept of the digital library, she proposes some of the core challenges for its development and preservation of the information they contain, to conclude that freedom is a central concept in the creation of new knowledge and that digitization and pu!ing online, as a way of guaranteeing access to documents, information and our memory, is a political gesture that allows us to glimpse a new nuance in the mission of libraries and archives and in the development of their services.