Visibility of Hispanic America University Archives through Internet

Abstract

The aim of this work is to detect the presence in Internet of university archives in countries of the Americas whose official language is Spanish, and analyses their website with particular attention to the contents published on them. A total of 56 websites were surveyed upto June 2013. The main conclusions were: a) there is a slow increase in the number of web sites, from 42 in 2005 to 56 in 2013; b) 52% correspond to the historical phase; c) Mexico is the country with the largest number of archives; d) 64% have their own website; e) 80% include archives' mission; f) about 20% does not include contact details; g) 74% inform the services offered; h) 53% have general descriptive information about the funds; i) 21% provide the ability to browse full-text documents; j) 28% diffuse the rules and work procedures; k) just over 45% include information on guidelines for access, browse and reproduce documents; l) a low percentage includes additional information, predominantly news (39%) and photos (18%), as well as archival legislation (20%) and archival resources of general interest (27%); m) in terms of tools of Web 2.0, 18% own a blog, 16% RSS, 27% Facebook and 23% Twitter.