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The ECLAC Digital Repository: close to 20 million downloads in six years

27 May 2020|Briefing note

ECLAC's Digital Repository is six years old! The more than 43,000 digital objects that it contains are the result of more than 15 years of hard work digitizing and converting millions of printed pages into electronic format.

In 2014, the first version of the Repository was launched to ensure the permanent preservation and dissemination of all of ECLAC’s intellectual output.

Over time, improvements welcomed a better integration into the ECLAC website, a user-friendly interface with more functionalities as well as new content.

The Repository has become a very popular information resource with ECLAC staff and academics, governmental bodies in the region and around the world. It is also leveraged, through interoperability and automatic harvesting, by many institutional networks and databases which expand the scope and visibility of ECLAC's work. Of the nearly 20 million downloads, close to 8 million were generated between May 2019 and April 2020! With April 2020 having a record of over 973,496 downloads, the highest number on record.

According to Wouter Schallier, Chief of the ECLAC Library, the current COVID-19 crisis demonstrates the importance of access to reliable information and data. The success of the Repository illustrates its relevance in the dissemination of ECLAC's intellectual output, both on the level of full text publications as well as videos and images.

Work is currently underway, in collaboration with the Public Information Unit, to catalogue and index thousands of photos and videos of ECLAC's recent work. The migration to a new version of the open source DSpace software is also being prepared with the Information and Communications Technologies Section.

The ECLAC Digital Repository is a product of ECLAC, developed and maintained by the Hernán Santa Cruz Library at the Commission headquarters in Santiago, Chile. Visit it at https://repositorio.cepal.org