Summary

The ABC (Archivo, Biblioteca y Catálogo) was Neogranadina’s digital platform for the description, management, and publication of all the digitised materials generated in the projects we participated in. The platform was built on CollectiveAccess, an open-source collections management system, and made use of cloud infrastructure to store and serve files efficiently, protect materials against server failures, and scale metadata and digital file sets progressively. It also provided a public interface for users to search, select, share, and export materials.

In 2026, we retired the ABC and migrated all of its collections to Zasqua, a new open-source archival platform built around IIIF standards and minimal computing principles. All materials previously available on the ABC are now accessible on Zasqua, alongside improved metadata and new features such as deep-zoom image viewing and full-text search.

Accomplishments

• The ABC was developed using CollectiveAccess, which allowed us to incorporate archives and collections without requiring fundamental changes to their original metadata schemes. The platform also supported connectivity with external systems through the OAI Protocol for Metadata Harvesting.
• The ABC allowed users from all over the world to access, browse, and search through all of Neogranadina’s collections. This facilitated interconnection between different archival holdings which, for institutional or administrative reasons, the public could usually only access separately and with incompatible tools.
• Registered users could select materials, create and save groups of elements for later consultation, share materials with others, and create presentations exportable in PDF, Excel, and PowerPoint formats.

Partners

This tool was developed with the support of the University of California, Santa Barbara.