Biblioteca Nacional

The Institution that I am most interested in here in Paraguay is the Biblioteca Nacional, since they should in theory be the strongest library in the country. Unfortunately, they have been terrifically neglected over the years and have no real budget in the Ministry of Culture. We are hoping that this changes with the appointment of a new Minister on the 15th of August.

American funds did recently support a project to microfilm some 90,000 pages of daily newspapers, and there are some signs that they will get some help from the "Binational," the organization which administers Itaupu Dam. This organization was providing the Internet, but now the bill is unpaid. So the library doesn't have Internet, which doesn't make sense to most people but is not all that crazy. I have heard several times that less than 5% of Paraguayans have reliable access to the Internet (and so I consider myself very lucky to have it, and for that matter keep a blog!)

There are actually readers at the Biblioteca Nacional, and when I went last week there were a greater number because the chicos were on winter break and getting caught up on research. Some 1000 books--reference, books on Paraguay, and many newspapers--are available to them. A large portion of the books that they own, though, are not cataloged and have been both collecting dust and sunlight for years.

Sunlight is one of the most damaging things to paper, not to mention humidity and dust, so most of these books (called the United Nations collection since they were donated by the organization over the years) have sustained irreparable damage. This photo is classic--one that a professor could show to his Library Preservation course to show the bleaching effect of sunlight. More important than bleaching, though, light causes a chemical reaction in the paper that makes it more attractive to acidic elements in the air, leading to more rapid deterioration.

There are a few sources of support for the library, and I am still asking around. They do have many employees who are willing and able to do good work with the place, and the Director is doing and has done good work with other institutions. A man named Martin Romano who owns an computer company is going ahead with the creation of a webpage for free. Also, the United Nations Information Center here is planning to donate new bookshelves and pay for cleaning the dust from the inaccessible collections, but that is still in the works. I was thinking this morning as a waited for a coffee: if such a simple undertaking can take some 20 minutes (I'm serious -- I don't know how it physically took so long), getting support for a huge project like the Biblioteca Nacional will of course take years. With the support of many, though, and in small steps, the place may be proceeding toward order en seguida.