UCSP leads training project in conservation of documentary heritage with peers from Latin America and Europe

The San Pablo Catholic University (UCSP) is in charge of coordinating the international project CODICES. This is an important achievement for our country and Latin America, as it will promote the enhancement of the documentary and bibliographic heritage of Peru, Mexico and Bolivia through the training of professors from universities in those countries for teaching in the recovery, conservation and empowerment for the research of important heritage collections. The project provides for the equipment of specialized laboratories for this purpose.

This initiative is one of the winners of funds from the European Union's Erasmus + program for training in higher education. It was chosen from more than a thousand international proposals, 104 of them from Latin America. The good rating obtained has allowed us to have one of the largest funds. The co-financing obtained will be up to 867 thousand euros for the development of the project for three years, starting now.

Along with San Pablo, Peru participates University of Piura. For Mexico, the Benemérita Autonomous University of Puebla and the Pan American University in Guadalajara. For Bolivia, the Universidad Mayor de San Andrés and the Bolivian Catholic University San Pablo in Tarija. European peers are the University of Catania, Italy and the University of Barcelona; To them is added the International Consulting and Mobility Agency (Incoma) from Seville, Spain.

“Part of the importance of this project is in the cooperation between the countries that comprise it, especially at the university level; Furthermore, it allows us to contribute, from training, to the enhancement of our documentary heritage, memory and identity. We must remember that Peru, Mexico and Bolivia share a past and a broad historical wealth, aspects highly valued in the European Community, indicated Dr. Francisco Rizo Patrón, senior professor at UCSP and director of the CODICIS project.

The project consists of the design and execution of a specialization course in conservation and management of archives and heritage libraries. This implies, in turn, creating and implementing its own pedagogical and scientific methodology based on the transfer of knowledge by European universities, which stand out and have extensive experience in the field of the project. The second part will be carried out through the teaching of the specialization course and the implementation of laboratories for the purposes of the project, as well as the provision of strategies for its sustainability over time.

The UCSP team, together with the other partner universities, prepared the project for more than a year to participate in the call for competitive funds from the Erasmus + program. On the part of the Arequipa university, the Department of International Relations and Cooperation of the UCSP worked on the proposal, an area that has experience in collaborative projects between universities from several countries, the Center for Peruvian Studies that is part of the Department of Humanities, the Library and the Research Directorate.

The experience of conservation actions for the bibliographic and documentary heritage of Arequipa through the digitization of the city's historical newspapers, starting with El Deber in 2014, after winning a competition from the British Library, as well as the knowledge that different members of the UCSP have acquired in the formulation of projects and in the relationship with actors from the country and abroad in these fields.

San Pablo is the only university in the south of the country that has the equipment and trained professionals to carry out the delicate work of digitizing ancient texts. Other projects in his charge were the recovery of the newspapers La Bolsa and El Republicano, the personal archive of former president José Luis Bustamante y Rivero, whose library is managed by the UCSP, is doing the same with the Library of the convent-museum of La Recoleta .

Arequipa, April 8, 2021.

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