María Fernanda Ruiz Mora from the ECLAC Hernán Santa Cruz Library has been honored with the UN Accelerator Award for Libraries in recognition of her efforts in building and modernizing the ECLAC Digital Repository and improving access to ECLAC’s digital assets.

The Annual UN Accelerator Award for Libraries is awarded by the Steering Committee for UN Secretariat Libraries, a General Assembly mandated organ, to a UN Librarian or Information management staff member who has shown a particularly high level of dedication, creativity and leadership in their efforts to accelerate and advance UN library and information services. 

This year, María Fernanda Ruiz, a systems engineer and coordinator of the ECLAC Digital Repository is the recipient. Her dedication and stewardship were celebrated during a special ceremony as part of the Dag Hammarskjöld Library's Insight Series event on the International Day for Universal Access to Information. 

“The whole ECLAC Library Team, and you in particular, have made a huge difference by building and providing a service that is now at the heart of the outreach, preservation and dissemination of ECLAC’s intellectual heritage.” Wouter Schallier, Chief of the Hernán Santa Cruz Library said during the ceremony. 

Since joining the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC) in 2012, María Fernanda Ruiz has been responsible for the creation, coordination, administration, and management of the Digital Repository. This platform grants open access to a vast collection of over 46,000 digital objects, including all ECLAC publications dating back to 1948, as well as multimedia and other assets. Available in English, Spanish, and Portuguese, the Digital Repository plays a critical role in the management, preservation, and dissemination of ECLAC's intellectual heritage.

Recently, the Digital Repository underwent a comprehensive revamp introducing enriched metadata schemes and upgrading its technical infrastructure. These changes have resulted in more consistent descriptions of resources, improved search results and better integration in ECLAC websites through API’s. Visit the ECLAC Digital Repository and click here to learn more about the upgrade.