On Thursday, September 28th at Hyatt Place Minister Xiomara Maduro and Minister President Evelyn Wever- Croes on behalf of the Minister of Endy Croes officially launched the Aruba Documentary and audio visual Heritage portal called “Aruba collection”.
Aruba Collection is accessible on www.coleccion.aw and it consists of a collaboration between the National Library of Aruba (BNA), the National Archives of Aruba (ANA) and UNOCA. These three organizations contributed with their creativity and expertise, and complemented each other to achieve a web portal, where the documentary and audiovisual Heritage of Aruba is made accessible to one and all. This process began under the guidance of the Aruba National Library, which in 2019 launched its digital collection on the Internet Archive platform.
In 2022 the Aruba National Archives and UNOCA joined forces with the BNA thus laying the foundations for Coleccion.aw . during 2022 and 2023 more partners joined the platform by offering their content on the platform. Meanwhile there are more than 75 thousand materials available, more than 1 million digitized pages, more than 35 thousand photos and more than 550 videos online, which are accessible 24/7. About themed collections on slavery were also created, but also on Carnival in preparation for the celebration of the 70th Carnival in 2024. September 28 was chosen as a symbolic day, taking into account that on this date the United Nations proclaimed this day as the International Day of Universal Access to Information.
At the launch of the Aruba collection the platform has 11 partners, namely:
Biblioteca Nacional Aruba, UNOCA, Archivo Nacional Aruba, Museo Aruba Arqueologico Nacional, Monumenten fonds Aruba, Bureau Plantage Zorg en Hoop, Monumenten Bureau Aruba, University of Aruba, Telearuba, direction Cultuur Aruba. The plan is that in the next phase more material about the Aruba collection will continue to be added and the way will be opened for more partners to join coleccion.aw .
He created the Aruba collection web portal with the help of: Setar, Government of Aruba, DIA, Internet Archive and Friends of the Archive Foundation, and funds from: Mondriaan Fonds, Prince Bernhard Cutluur fonds Caribbean and representation of the Netherlands in Aruba.