Circuit Court of Istmina, Chocó

Stabilising and digitising 19th- and 20th-century materials now in precarious condition at the Circuit Court of Istmina, Chocó (EAP 1477)

Photographs: Ann Farnsworth, Jhon Leison Rivas R., and Fundación Muntú Bantú

Summary

The project aimed to digitize court documents from Istmina, Colombia, formerly piled into sacks and in the brick of destruction, in order to create a digital collection relevant to the histories of Black communities in Colombia. THe project was financed by the British Library as part of the Endangered Archives Program (EAP 1477).

Neogranadina did not carry out the digitization work, but rather served as a consultant and archival partner for the project. In particular, we offered support in cataloguing and describing digitized materials, and are working to publish the resulting images and metadata in our platforms.

Achievements

The on-site team produced 61,163 images, totalling 1.959 gigabytes of data. These images constitute a digitized collection of 814 legal case files, dating to 1860-1930, organized into 37 boxes, reflecting the bulk of the historical documents for this date range housed at the Circuit Court of Istmina in the Colombian Chocó.
Interns working at Fundación Muntú Bantú cataloged approximately 30% of digitized materials at the level of individual case files. These interns training in how to read historical sources and read and contextualized selected materials.
Neogranadina is in the process of incorporating these materials and their metadata into its ABC platform.

Participants

Neogranadina was the archival partner for this project, which was carried out by an interinstitutional team based in the US and Colombia. Our partners included:

Ann Farnsworth-Alvear, Ph.D. (University of Pennsylvania)
Daniel Valera (University of Michigan)
Kelly López Roldán (Universidad Nacional de Colombia, Sede Medellín)
Sergio Mosquera and María Fernanda Parra, Fundación Muntú Bantú, Centro de Memoria Afrodiaspórica de Colombia