In this undated image from the Gabriel García Márquez archive, the Nobel laureate is seen with Fidel Castro. Image: Used courtesy of Harry Ransom Center, University of Texas, photographer unidentified

By Porter Anderson, Editor-in-Chief | @Porter_Anderson

More Than 27,000 Images Available Online

In Tuesday’s article (December 12) at the University of Texas’ UT News in Austin, the staff of the university’s Harry Ransom Center research library reports that more than 27,000 images from the late Gabriel García Márquez’s papers now are online.

Beautifully arrayed with an introductory video, the collection is divided into various sections, both in terms of time periods and types of content. Acquired in 2014 (García Márquez died in April of that year), the archive includes 22 personal scrapbooks and notebooks, screenplays, photos, five of the Colombian author’s computers and two of his typewriters.

From a scrapbook by and about Gabriel García Márquez. Image: Courtesy Harry Ransom Center, University of Texas

In the article on the collection, Ransom Center project librarian Jullianne Ballou is quoted, saying, “Anyone with access to the internet can have an in-depth look at García Márquez’s archive. Spanning more than a half-century, the contents reflect García Márquez’s energy and discipline and reveal an intimate view of his work, family, friendships and politics.”

The digitization effort was enabled by a “Digitizing Hidden Special Collections and Archives” grant from the Council on Library and Information Resources (CLIR). The grant program is made possible by funding from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.

In its discussion of the project, the article points out that text included in the archive is searchable in both English and Spanish editions.

The project overall is reported to have required 18 months of work from many specialists, with the university’s Benson Latin American Collection providing guidance on descriptive materials in Spanish.

Gabriel García Márquez and Emma Castro, 1957. Image: Provided with permission by Harry Ransom Center, University of Texas, photographer unidentified

“While accessing the online archive,” the report says, “scholars, fans, educators and students can choose to use the Mirador image viewer, which facilitates side-by-side comparisons of García Márquez’s evolving literary works. This capability is made possible by the International Image Interoperability Framework (IIIF); with the implementation of IIIF, all images from the online archive are accessible to an international network of IIIF-enabled digital image collections.”

The online archive is available through the Ransom Center’s digital collections portal, which makes accessible more than 80,000 images from the Ransom Center’s holdings.

As the Ransom Center’s digital collections services head Liz Gushee says in the article, the project “provides rights-holder-approved online access to copyright-protected archival materials, opportunities for comparative research and interoperability with other IIIF–compatible online collections.

“The support from García Márquez’s family made this important project possible.”

A short video on the archive and its holdings is included, and we have that embedded for you here.

The full story from UT News on the Gabriel García Márquez at the Harry Ransom Center is here.