WASHINGTON, USA – The Dominican Republic donated today to the Columbus Library the first part of the digitalization project of the historical archive of the Permanent Council of the Organization of American States (OAS), during a ceremony held at the headquarters of the hemispheric institution in Washington, DC.
The minister of foreign affairs of the Dominican Republic, Roberto Álvarez, highlighted the historical value of the Library and emphasized that “this act symbolizes a joint effort between the ministry of foreign affairs of the Dominican Republic through our Permanent Mission and the Columbus Library. What we make available to everyone today is a significant part of nearly four decades of record.”
Meanwhile, the secretary-general of the OAS, Luis Almagro, said that the Columbus Library, in its 123 years of life, has served as an institutional memory of the hemispheric institution and the Inter-American System.
“We celebrate the donation of the digitization of the historical archive of the OAS Permanent Council by the Dominican Republic, which represents a milestone for the institutional memory of our Organization,” said secretary-general Almagro.
The delivery contains almost 1,000 minutes of the sessions of the Permanent Council. There are more than 50,000 pages in PDF format, which have been subjected to an optical character recognition process to be able to search their content.