The Ecclesiastical Historical Archive of Biscay (AHEB-BEHA) and the ICARO Center: a Didactic Resource and a Challenge
for Interactive Dissemination
Anabella BARROSO ARAHUETES, Dr.
Directora del Archivo Historico Eclesiastico de Bizkaia (AHEB-BEHA), del Centre ICARO y del Servicio Diocesano de Archivos, de Bilbao, Archivo Historico Eclesiastico de Bizkaia, C/ Larrauri, 1 A, planta, 48160
Derio (Bizkaia) Spain e-mail: zuzen@aheb-beha.org, https://www.facebook.com/barroso.anabella
The Ecclesiastical Historical Archive of Biscay (AHEB-BEHA) and the ICARO Center: a Didactic Resource and a Challenge for Interactive Dissemination
ABSTRACT
Preservation and dissemination have always been the fundamental pillars in the archival policy of the Diocese of Bilbao. In 2000, a number of digitization projects were put forward and intended as the Archive Digital Service. With the creation of the ICARO Center we wanted to go a step further. We want that the knowledge accumulated over the centuries in documents preserved at the Archive becomes useful information and, in particular, we want that information to be accessible, both physically and virtually, for any user. Therefore, we have started an educational programme for students from any level of education, from primary school through to higher education, to make them aware of the importance of preserving present documents as support for the memory of the future. This educational programme is coupled with guided visists adapted to users, and a cultural leisure offer for all ages.
Lo AHEB-BEHA ed il Centro ICARO: una risorsa didattica ed una sfida per una disseminazione in-
terattiva
SINTESI
Conservazione e disseminazione sono sempre state i pilastri fondamentali della politica archivistica della dioce-si di Bilbao. Nel 2000, una serie di progetti di digitalizzazione sono stati portati avanti intendendoli come Ser-vizio Archivistico Digitale. Con la creazione del Centro ICARO si e voluto andare un po' piu avanti. Si e volu-to che il sapere accumulato attraverso i secoli nei documenti conservati nell'archivio diventasse utile informazione, e, in particolare, si e voluto che tali informazioni fossero accessibili, sia fisicamente che virtual-mente, per l'utenza. Percio e stato iniziato un programma educativo per gli studenti di ogni ordine, dalla scuo-la primaria ai livelli piu avanzati, per renderli edotti dell'importanza di conservare i documenti attuali come supporto per la memoria del futuro. Questo programma educativo viene rafforzato da visite guidate adattate all'utenza, e da una offerta culturale per tutte le eta.
Cerkveni zgodovinski arhiv Biscay (AHEB-BEHA) in center ICARO: didaktičen vir in izziv za interaktivno razširjanje
IZVL^EČEK
Ohranjanje in razširjanje sta bila vedno temeljna stebra arhivske politike škofije Bilbao. V letu 2000 so se pričeli številni projekti digitalizacije, ki naj bi zagotavljali digitalne usluge. Z ustanovitvijo ICARO Center smo želeli storiti korak dlje. Želimo, da postane znanje, pridobljeno skozi stoletja in ohranjeno v dokumentih arhiva koristna informacija, predvsem pa želimo, da so podatki dostopni, tako fizično kot virtualno, vsem uporabnikom. Zato smo pričeli z izobraževalnim programom za dijake in študente vse od osnovne šole do visokošolskih zavodov, da bi se le-ti zavedali pomembnosti ohranjanja sedanje dokumentacije za prihodnost. Ta izobraževalni program je povezan z vodenimi obiski, ki so prilagojeni uporabnikom, ter kulturno ponudbo za pripadnike vseh starosti.
Anabella BARROSO ARAHUETES: The Ecclesiastical Historical Archive of Biscay (AHEB-BEHA) and the ICARO Center: a Didactic Resource and a Challenge for Interactive Dissemination, 23-36
EXTRACTO
La conservacion y la difusion han sido los pilares basicos de la politica archivistica de la diocesis de Bilbao desde los inicios del AHEB-BEHA en 1976. En el 2000 pusimos en marcha el Servicio Digital del Archivo y con la creacion y puesta en marcha del Centro Icaro hemos pretendido dar un paso mas en la generacion, conservacion y difusion de la memoria digital. El Centro ICARO tiene por objeto crear una red social en el que el Archivo y los usuarios interactuen y se conviertan en generadores de memoria. Hemos puesto en marcha un programa educativo para sensibilizar a estudiantes de todos los niveles educativos sobre la importancia de la conservacion de los documentos actuales como soporte de la memoria del futuro. Contamos con visitas guiadas adaptadas a los diferentes tipos de usuarios y un programa de ocio cultural en el que pueden participar personas de todas las edades.
1. Preservation and dissemination, two fundamental pillars of diocesan archival policy
From its creation in 1950, Diocese of Bilbao has shown a special sensibility and concern on preserving and putting its historical heritage at the disposal of society. Through the parishes, autonomous organizations and diocesan general services, the diocese has assumed coherently the cost derived from the preservation, use and dissemination of a documental heritage which, although being mainly pastoral as to its nature and mission, has an undeniable social and cultural value. Thus, the diocesan archival policy has faced the same challenges as the rest of archives; among those we can mention preservation, dissemination, descriptive standardization and the application of the new technologies, with the aim of preserving and disseminating a documental heritage which goes from the twelfth century and continues through time up to the present.
In 1972, as a result of the intellectual concerns of several seminarians and priests, the general inventory of Parochial Archives of Bizcaya is begun, and it is at this point when they consider convenient the transfer of the parochial documentation previous to 1900 to an suitable place. Thus, a decree of Monsignor Anoveros, dated in 1976, September 29, involved the establishment of the Ecclesiastic Historical Archive of Bizkaia (AHEB-BEHA hereinafter) which began its activity in that same year, November 2nd, as an archive for the concentration of parochial fonds. With this archive it was pretended, in the first place, to look for a solution for parochial documentary fonds in a society which was being secularized very quickly, as the scarcity of Presbyterian resources could neither guarantee the adequate preservation nor facilitate the enquiry to the numerous researchers interested in familiar history, genealogy or social history. The interest for putting the documentary fonds, of undeniable cultural and social importance, at the disposal of the entities which have generated them or the public in general has always prevailed. Firstly, the fonds deposited at AHEB-BEHA were the registration books of sacramental administration (baptisms, marriages, deceases and confirmations) and non sacramental fonds from the XVI-eth century - although there are documents dated before the XlV-nth century - to 1900, from a total of 219 parishes of Bizkaia.
The existence of the Historical Archive mitigated the situation of the parochial documentation prior to 1900 and guaranteed it to be made available for a growing number of users and researchers, but it did not offer a solution for the documentation generated after the XX-eth century. Therefore, around 1990, the people in charge of the diocese detected an imminent and almost unavoidable risk of loss and destruction of modern documentation, generated in all types of media by the different diocesan organisms, whose multiplicity, diversity and dispersion did not help to preserve the documentation in its intermediate phase. They described the situation as alarming and in 1993 they suggested the creation of an autonomous diocesan body where professionals specialized in archival science provide advising and orientation to the archives of all diocesan institutions. Thus, in 1997, February 1st, the Diocesan Archival Service is set into motion with the aim of standardizing the archival policy of the Diocese and establishing a system of records management for all diocesan archives. The Diocesan Archival Service, apart from the systematic collection of fonds and the coordination and supervision of the existent diocesan archives, including the Historical Archive, is in charge of advising and guiding all diocesan bodies as far as the following aspects are concerned: archiving correctly the generated documentation, determining the administrative validity periods, fixing the criteria for appraisal and preservation of series, regulating the period for transfers to avoid the noncurrent arrivals of fonds to the historical archive, giving archival processing to fonds, elaborating models for all levels of archive
Anabella BARROSO ARAHUETES: The Ecclesiastical Historical Archive of Biscay (AHEB-BEHA) and the ICARO Center: a Didactic Resource and a Challenge for Interactive Dissemination, 23-36
and common finding aids, cataloguing and classification, and automation of all diocesan archives. Since 1997, the necessary steps for the establishment of a system of records management of all archives of the Diocese of Bilbao are given, turning the existent Historical Archive into a main piece, the place where all documentation of permanent preservation is intended to stay.
Since 1997, AHEB-BEHA which was born as an archive for the concentration of parochial fonds of the diocese of Bilbao became the main piece of the Diocesan Archival System, promoted and coordinated by the Diocesan Archival Service. From this moment on, AHEB-BEHA had to adapt to its new function and began to update its approaches. The commitment towards descriptive standardization and automation of finding aids were two main goals since 1998, as well as the improvement of its installations and updating of the preservation policy, promoting the reproduction of documents into other media to guarantee the preservation of the originals.
The new function of AHEB-BEHA as a main piece of the Diocesan Archival System has not damaged the function of dissemination and preservation but both has been largely increased with the creation and implementation of the Digital Service in year 2004, allowing the access to archival fonds not only on site but also trough the Internet. AHEB-BEHA, with two lineal kilometres of occupation of stacks, is one of the most important historical archives of the Basque Country, not only for the nature of its fonds (covering the chronological period from the XII to XXI centuries) and wide offer of access to the parochial documentation of Bizkaia from 1500 to 1940 practically apart from the documentation of more than 70 non parochial fonds, most of them from diocesan bodies and secular movements, as well as the on line access to the catalogue and more than two millions of registers extracted from the sacramental books of baptisms, marriages and deaths (www.aheb-beha.org). As the documentary and more qualified service offer grow, the demand by a wide range of people of different ages, origin and education also increases.
2. AHEB-BEHA's Digital Service: a commitment towards active dissemination and opening with no limits of time or space
In year 2000, after different conversations with the Department of Culture of the Basque Country, the possibility of implementing a project of digitisation of parochial fonds' sacramental series became a reality. From the beginning we planned it as the creation of the archive's digital service which, apart from the reproduction in other media and the redefinition of all archive's services and policies, meant a notable change in its dissemination policy and an added value for the guarded documentation.
So when time came to define the project, aims and methodology, we had in view the creation of the information and interactive dissemination service, and not only a mere change of medium or backup (we already had the 90% of our fonds microfilmed). The main aim consisted of facilitating to the maximum the consult of sacramental registers which, as the statistics from 1976 show, generated more than the 85% of the requests on site and almost the 100% of the external requests by post mail, telephone and, from 1998 on, by email. We have bet for digital reproduction as a way for achieving a better dissemination of our fonds given that computer screens allow images of higher quality or even digital restoration.
We started with the digitisation and trascription of parchments - the oldest documents - and digitisation of sacramental series of parochial fonds. This parochial documentation, apart from registering the administrated sacraments, contains specific and original information representative of the whole population (sacramental registers acted at that time as Civil Registry until the end of the XIX century). Their ease of use and relative simplicity of reading and access (especially since the XVIII century) make them accessible to a wide range of users and not only to an elitist or minority public. Our intention was to promote the universal access to a type of archival documentation of universal interest as well and with a high social content, which has given this documentation an added value and public interest. From May 2004, the archive's website, www.aheb-beha.org, allows, as we have mentioned before, the online consult of the archive's general catalogue and more than two millions of sacramental registers previous to 1900. We offer, also, the possibility of enquiring reprographic services (microfilm copies, certificates, literal transcriptions, etc) and only in that case the user will be required to sign in as a user with the only requirement, if done through the Internet, of having an email address in order to get in contact almost immediately through this channel.
Anabella BARROSO ARAHUETES: The Ecclesiastical Historical Archive of Biscay (AHEB-BEHA) and the ICARO Center: a Didactic Resource and a Challenge for Interactive Dissemination, 23-36
The need to transfer a high volume of data into the web meant a redefinition of the archive's computing development. In the first phase of automation we had applied the main concept of archival management, and in this second phase we had to fix the description and standardization together with dissemination of the finding aids and internet request as well as the users' and online request records management, opting for free software solutions.
The consequences of joining the network of networks, what we have sometimes define as a leap in the dark did not take long to come. The website multiplied the possibilities of dissemination of AHEB-BEHA's fonds and activities, extending the geographical and linguistic (Basque, Spanish and English) range of the users. On the one hand, the number of on site users grew because the web acted as a powerful speaker and made the archive known in places and collectives which were completely unaware of the archive and its documentation. On the other hand, this has been translated into an exponential increase of the number of enquiries to the archive and reprographic requests, which not only have grown since the implementation of this service through the Internet but also have collapsed the Front Office services. Our main aim is that the management of those services adjusts, as possible, to the speed that our users can access the provided information and services we offer.
The reprographic requests have increased in more than a 40% since 2004 but the most direct consequence is the redistribution of their origin, winning by a landslide the online requests. Since February 2010, we verified, besides, a progressive growth of the requests received by means of the extranet established in our researchers room, which suggests a change of habits in our on-site users, who has previously consulted our database at home and enquiry the reprographic requests directly by means of the SIGA-AKIS system, either at home or the computer provided in our researchers room-currently at full capacity since February 2010.
Apart from the enquiry of originals (very restricted because of preservation reasons) and microfilms (more than the 85% of fonds are microfilmed), the access to digitized images is allowed, either digitized from microfilm - in the case of the sacramental series - or from originals - parchments and some documents of higher interest, together with the last transfers of non microfilmed parochial documentation -. We have already noticed a change of behaviour regarding on site users, given that many of them have made online searches at home or work places and come to the archive to consult the found documents directly. This expedites their research but swamps the Front Office because of the increase of requests of documentary units (in any medium) given its faster location.
Finally, given the volume of current and predictable images we have opted to convert all images into djvu format, using a suitable viewer. We have also designed access and enquiry regulations for the users of this digital service. Although in this phase the access to all the images of sacramental registers through the Internet is not planned, the system is prepared to allow the online visualization of the digitized records. We provide the users with a form so that they can notify us possible mistakes, in case of detecting, which allows us to correct these mistakes regarding signatures of images or indexed data. We must highlight the excellent cooperation of our users who detect - and excuse - possible mistakes and contribute to their correction. It is a first step towards interaction between users and professionals, and also inside the own community of users, because the database provides a space for adding comments in each register offering thus additional information to the rest of users.
Regarding research topics, the star continues to be genealogy and familiar history. More than 80% of our users come virtually or on site to the archive in order to search for details of their ancestors to use them in genealogical studies, but also for the fulfilment of diverse ecclesial or civil formalities -especially as a consequence of the Historical Memory Law -. We find a constant and significant increase of the enquiries regarding internal management or historical researches. The higher depth in our descriptions of records or documentary units guarded by AHEB-BEHA and the dissemination of the catalogue through our website has shown the documentary wealth to a still minority public, more interested in different aspects of historical research. Most of users are not interested in carrying out an arduous research each time they need any information from the archive, but they want to achieve fast results, and if the system provide them directly, they ask them by mail, telephone or the standardized forms we provide. All this carried us to offer add-on services in the archive, according to the current rates, which are developed with the creation of the Archives Reference Service (ARS) in order to attend the growing demands for information and requests, and also the implementation of the Document
Anabella BARROSO ARAHUETES: The Ecclesiastical Historical Archive of Biscay (AHEB-BEHA) and the ICARO Center: a Didactic Resource and a Challenge for Interactive Dissemination, 23-36
Reproduction Service (DRS) to attend the reprographic requests, mainly in digital medium, opting for the use of digital signature in short.
Number of requests and services from 2001 to 2013
Anabella BARROSO ARAHUETES: The Ecclesiastical Historical Archive of Biscay (AHEB-BEHA) and the ICARO Center: a Didactic Resource and a Challenge for Interactive Dissemination, 23-36
Effective enquiries to forms in the Internet
	2008	2009	2010	TOTALES
BAPTISMS	1.253.629	1.503.216	1.470.162	4.227.007
MARRIAGES	346.539	378.960	372.332	1.097.831
DEATHS	107.968	177.135	155.755	440.858
TOTAL	1708136	2059311	1998249	5.765.696
Effective enquiries to forms in the Extranet (from February 2010, being the researchers room closed during August, September and October)
	Feb-jun 2010	Nov-dic 2010	2011	2012	Totales
Bautismos	18.623	7344	25598	31839	83404
Matrimonios	6433	2061	9926	10544	29964
Defunciones	6726	1684	8532	11013	27955
Totales	31.782	11089	44056	53396	140323
Virtual users
14500 registered users in SIGA-AKIS (4.300 users already registered in our former system before 2003 who expressly authorized to be included in the users database).
On site users
15 daily users (previous appointment) 195 days per year open to the public 4.500 users with user card (from 1976) 25 services per day.
Archives Reference Service. 2013
Total requests: 62 Internal (diocesan): 18 External: 44
Anabella BARROSO ARAHUETES: The Ecclesiastical Historical Archive of Biscay (AHEB-BEHA) and the ICARO Center: a Didactic Resource and a Challenge for Interactive Dissemination, 23-36
3. Icaro, a step forward in preservation and dissemination of digital memory
The commitment towards the creation of Icaro Centre, Advance Centre for the Knowledge of History, thanks to a subsidy consequence of the "Plan Avanza Contenidos" in 2008, supposes a further step in the commitment towards interactive disseminations of Archive's records. The word ICARO makes reference in Spanish to Research, Knowledge, Archive, Network, and Organization. ICARO pretends to be an advanced centre for knowledge and research in order to disseminate the documentary wealth kept at AHEB-BEHA. The main aim of ICARO Centre is to renew the tasks and functions of the Archive, fostering its dissemination work by means of the creation of an advanced network of knowledge in which integrate other organizations (universities, archives, documentation centres).
Icaro Centre, as a centre of excellence, pretends to generate a suitable environment which facilitates the understanding of the function that archives in general and ours in particular carry out in service of society, as a primary source of knowledge for the historical heritage and proof of events and acts, apart from being an instrument to know the importance of writing - in its different versions until the current electronic medium - as the main channel for the transmission of knowledge and acts throughout history. In this Centre we try to show which way the main functions of archives, these are, gathering, preserving and disseminating, are essential to build the current society of knowledge, adapting to the consultative needs of the citizens, acting as witnesses of the pass of history and its vicissitudes, and expediting administrative tasks fundamental to prove acts and guarantee people's freedoms and rights. We try to turn the knowledge contained in the documents kept at the Archive, accumulated through the centuries, in useful information and, above all, physically and virtually accessible to all kind of users and make people aware of the importance of the current documents for the preservation of the present memory in the future. Moreover, with the Educational Programme, which was presented last month of May 2010 and will be implemented since February 2011, we want to show the importance of the individual and collective memory to students at all educational levels in order to value the past, stress the present and ensure the future of society.
This Centre wants to contribute to the development of the Knowledge Society and the Information Society by means of the introduction of the ICT in all communication, creation and learning processes involved in the development and creation of the Centre. It also pretends to contribute to the dissemination and establishment of the ICT in general and free software in particular inside the general context of Information Society. For that purpose it uses them in:
ple, users and visitors, as on site as virtual.
ents and teaching through the web 2.0, educational guides and workshops. iovisual Service; Icaro Centre has been conceived from the double aspect of space, on the one hand, and Centre for virtual knowledge, on the other, and it is meant to act as a bridge between both environments; thus, it will be built in the tangible and virtual
Relation to peo Relation to stud Digital and Aud
Anabella BARROSO ARAHUETES: The Ecclesiastical Historical Archive of Biscay (AHEB-BEHA) and the ICARO Center: a Didactic Resource and a Challenge for Interactive Dissemination, 23-36
space of direct contact among the creator of the archive's contents and the user-citizen and the educational community.
• Development of accessible applications using the last development and audiovisual technology.
At present, we are developing some of the basic lines of action of Icaro Centre, enabling the digitisation of documents and their dissemination through the researchers room and online (for instance, our collection of parchments) and also allowing that the own users contribute to the creation of the Digital Archive. Since December 2009, the website www.centroicaro.net is operating as an advanced virtual space where images, videos, sound recordings and interactive virtual exhibitions coexist. The users can participate leaving comments and writing in the Panel of Memory and can also deposit their own pictures and documents. This is a first step of the attempt to create a virtual community of users who can access the documents and also deposit documentation (pictures, texts, oral testimonies, etc) becoming, thus, generators of memory who help to create, retrieve and rescue documents and testimonies.
Moreover Icaro, Advanced Centre for the Knowledge of History, will develop and promote researches on history. At present, and inside the acts in commemoration of the 60th Anniversary of the diocese's history, it is going to implement two programmes of collection of documents and testimonies. '"Help us to build History" pretends to gather documents and '"Your testimony also matters' is a programme for the collection of oral resources to retrieve first-hand testimonies about events and ives.
In its line of being useful to society, the Centre offers information about the administrative and legal value of the documents deposited in the AHEB-BEHA, apart from their undeniable pastoral and historical value. Part from the information gathered in the archive's documents, and especially in the sacramental registers, provides details of interest in order to carry out proceedings regarding nationality, inheritances, proving the possession of properties, boundaries, change of surnames, etc. This is especially important in order that the citizens - and students as future users of these services - value archives. It is necessary a great raise of awareness about the need to preserve the documents generated at present in electronic media mainly because of their current administrative value and because of their potential informative and historical value in the future.
The Interpretation Centre of Archives offers since 4 of November of 2010 the possibility to know the different fonds of the Archive, their research possibilities but, above all, it shows the different jobs we carry out in the Archive in order to generate, preserve and disseminate the memory in any medium.
Visits to Icaro. Statistics 2010-2012
	Grupos	Horas	Hombres	Mujeres	Total Personas
2010	34	85	163	160	323
2011	40	100	196	251	447
2012	13	26	26	50	76
2012	15	46	721	985	1706
Totales	102	257	1106	1446	2552
Anabella BARROSO ARAHUETES: The Ecclesiastical Historical Archive of Biscay (AHEB-BEHA) and the ICARO Center: a Didactic Resource and a Challenge for Interactive Dissemination, 23-36
Didactic activities in 2013
Maybe one of the most outstanding aspects of Icaro Centre is the educational programme, with the vocation of becoming one of the main lines of action in order to capture a more varied public regarding age and education. With the help of Icaroto and Icarota, who invite us to learn by playing, the website gathers interactive plays for different educational levels in which we can learn ancient letters, parchments, pictures, make puzzles. Moreover, Icaro Centre pretends to establish a pedagogical service for animation of cultural character which answers to the needs that different collectives (Primary and Secondary Education schools, universities, children and young adults' collectives and adults) demand in relation to the adapted accessibility and cultural offer directed to the non formal educational system and leisure offers in informal spaces.
Anabella BARROSO ARAHUETES: The Ecclesiastical Historical Archive of Biscay (AHEB-BEHA) and the ICARO Center: a Didactic Resource and a Challenge for Interactive Dissemination, 23-36
Interacting with the educational system and trying to be an educational agent more, AHEB-BEHA and Icaro Centre pretend to give a further step and offer didactic units to be send to the educational centres which will be available through Moodle platform in order to be used in accredited studies, according to the different educational levels, encouraging the basic competences in civic coexistence by means of the preservation and respect for individual and collective memory, paying special attention and fostering digital competences. These units will be completed with visits to AHEB-BEHA where workshops, adapted to the different educational levels and focused on aspects such as evolution of writing until current computers, different documents sustained in different media, history of Bizka-ia and the Basque Country, will be developed. On the one hand, one of the main objectives is to make the work done in the archive known and get it to be appreciated by the current society. We are also interested in providing the teaching and student collective at primary education, secondary education or high school the profession's own methodologies. Therefore, we will provide didactic units which explain, with the necessary curricular adaptation in each case, aspects such as preservation, cataloguing, classification or dissemination, necessary aspects for the documents and memory to be accessible to all public.
Anabella BARROSO ARAHUETES: The Ecclesiastical Historical Archive of Biscay (AHEB-BEHA) and the ICARO Center: a Didactic Resource and a Challenge for Interactive Dissemination, 23-36
Icaro Centre will use the following formative spaces:
1.	Learning in the archive classroom
2.	Learning in the own school classroom
3.	Virtual learning ^ previously planned from virtual environments (autonomous learning), fostering the new technologies result of the web 2.0 (blogs, wikis, content syndication, etc.)
^e use of these three formative spaces pursues an interactive work from the archive to the classroom and vice versa. ^e aim is to work previously in the classroom and after visit the archive, participate in the workshops and finally to work again in the classroom; the results are expected to revert to the Archive, by means of blogs, etc, and those opinions and works to be incorporated in the Panel of Memory placed in the own Interpretation Centre but also operative in the website of Icaro Centre. We are especially interested in this last aspect of interacting with the students in order that they become, above all the eldest groups, generators of memory.
Anabella BARROSO ARAHUETES: The Ecclesiastical Historical Archive of Biscay (AHEB-BEHA) and the ICARO Center: a Didactic Resource and a Challenge for Interactive Dissemination, 23-36
The visit to the Archive's installations consider the access to the researchers room, one deposit, the room where the Documentary Reproduction Service is located (in order to see how a microfilmed or original document is digitised, or different documents in different media), and the Interpretation Centre, whose main objectives are to make known the functions of the Archive and the wide perspectives of research on history of Bizkaia offered by the documents deposited in the Archive. According to the age of the visitors, they will be able, besides, to see originals and carry out a small research in situ. We are interested in explaining why in the current culture in which everything hardly lasts three minutes our work consists of preserving old documents which reflect the memory of society and, moreover, we want to raise the awareness about the importance of current documents - mainly electronic - as memory for the future.
Anabella BARROSO ARAHUETES: The Ecclesiastical Historical Archive of Biscay (AHEB-BEHA) and the ICARO Center: a Didactic Resource and a Challenge for Interactive Dissemination, 23-36
Moreover, we consider the possibility of establishing an Archive Classroom, based in AHEB-BEHA's experience and with concrete educational objectives and methodology directed to students of archival science and professionals from the field of archives who want to share experiences. The Archive Classroom will offer, apart from a very important line of dissemination for potential users, user education seminars in relation to the concrete contents of the archive's records, methodologies to make these accessible and projects carried out on them.
Anabella BARROSO ARAHUETES: The Ecclesiastical Historical Archive of Biscay (AHEB-BEHA) and the ICARO Center: a Didactic Resource and a Challenge for Interactive Dissemination, 23-36
SUMMARY
Preservation and dissemination have always been the fundamental pillars in the archival policy of the Diocese of Bilbao since the AHEB-BEHA was established in 1976. In 2000, a number of digitization projects were put forward and intended as the Archive Digital Service. With the creation of the ICARO Center we wanted to go a step further. ^is Center attempts at revealing the main features of the archives; that is to say, to collect, to preserve and to disseminate as the key principles in building current knowledge society. ^e aim of the Center is to increase accessibility to archive holdings deposited in the Ecclesiastical Historical Archive of Biscay as custodian of the Documentary Heritage of the Diocese of Bilbao - from the 12th century to present day -. We want that the knowledge accumulated over the centuries in documents preserved at the Archive becomes useful information and, in particular, we want that information to be accessible, both physically and virtually, for any user. In addition, we also aim to increase awareness about the importance of present documents for the preservation of current memory for the future. ^erefore, we have started an educational programme for students from any level of education, from primary school through to higher education, to make them aware of the importance of preserving present documents (most of them in electronic format) as support for the memory of the future. Documents are important not only for individual memory but also for collective memory in order to value the past, how the influence the present time and to secure the future of memory and history. ^is educational programme is coupled with guided visists adapted to users, and a cultural leisure offer for all ages.
Submitting date: 10.04.2013 Acceptance date: 24.04.2013