From BC100 to Digital Heritage: Building a Preservation Ecosystem in Chile
- The implementation of high-speed capture technology, such as the DT BC100, enabled a paradigm shift from item-level conservation to the mass digitization of millions of assets.
- In regions with contested histories, digitization serves as an ethical act, recovering “invisible” narratives and democratizing access to public memory.
- Beyond storage, integrating Digital Humanities platforms transforms static images into searchable datasets, fueling new forms of computational research.
For Samuel Salgado Tello, Director of the National Center for Photographic Heritage (Cenfoto-UDP) in Chile, digitization is far more than a technical workflow; it is a tool for democracy.
In his presentation, Salgado chronicles the twenty-five-year evolution of Cenfoto, framing its growth from a small university laboratory into a national powerhouse as the construction of a “digital preservation ecosystem from the South.” Operating in a region defined by seismic activity, fire risks, and a complex political history, Cenfoto has leveraged advanced technology to ensure that the visual memory of Chile is not only preserved but actively interrogated and shared.
A Shift in Scale: The Challenge of La Nación
The turning point for Cenfoto came in 2014 with the acquisition of the La Nación newspaper archive. Suddenly, the center was responsible for approximately four to five million items, including negatives, prints, and bound volumes. This massive influx of material forced a radical rethinking of their operations. The team realized that their existing protocols, designed for the careful treatment of individual 19th-century photographs, were insufficient for an industrial-scale archive.
Salgado describes this as a transition from preserving objects to managing information systems. The challenge was no longer just about the chemical stability of a single glass plate; it was about the logistical architecture required to digitize, describe, and store millions of assets without drowning in the backlog. To survive this shift, Cenfoto had to look beyond traditional flatbed scanners and embrace automation and speed.
Technology as a Milestone: Implementing the DT BC100
To meet this challenge, Cenfoto partnered with Digital Transitions to acquire the DT BC100, a dual-camera digitization platform designed for high-speed mass capture. Salgado describes the arrival of this equipment not merely as a purchase, but as a “milestone for the country”.
The DT BC100 allowed the team to process fragile bound newspapers and glass plates at speeds previously unimaginable in the region. This technological leap did more than increase throughput; it changed the center’s “horizon of expectations.”
With the ability to digitize at scale, Cenfoto could finally propose ambitious national projects, securing funding and trust from government agencies. The technology became the backbone of their new ecosystem, enabling them to clear the backlog of La Nación and ensure that these fragile documents were accessible to the public rather than locked away in storage.
Digitization as an Ethical Act
Perhaps the most poignant aspect of Salgado’s presentation is his philosophical framing of the work. He argues that “digitizing is not a copy, it is a question.” In the context of Chile’s history, particularly the legacy of the dictatorship and human rights violations, the archive serves a critical social function.
Many of the collections Cenfoto manages contain images that were previously “invisible”—censored, hidden, or simply inaccessible to the average citizen.
By bringing these images into the digital realm, Cenfoto acts as a steward of public truth. Salgado emphasizes that the archive is a living entity that connects the past to the present, allowing new generations to grapple with their history. In this sense, the high-resolution images captured by the DT BC100 are not just files; they are pieces of evidence and tools for social reflection.
From Preservation to Digital Humanities
Looking to the future, Salgado highlights Cenfoto’s move toward the Digital Humanities. It is no longer enough to have a digital file simply; the goal is to turn that file into data. Through platforms like Cultura Digital and Datos UDP, the center is experimenting with facial recognition, georeferencing, and automated metadata extraction.
This shift transforms the archive from a passive repository into a dataset for computational research. Researchers can now map visual trends over decades, trace the appearance of specific individuals across thousands of photos, and explore the collection in ways that physical browsing never allowed. By combining the preservation-grade capture of the DT BC100 with modern data science, Cenfoto is ensuring that Chile’s photographic heritage remains a dynamic, evolving resource.
Achieve Mass Digitization with the DT BC100
Cenfoto-UDP used the DT BC100 to revolutionize its workflow, enabling the preservation of millions of fragile newspaper pages. The DT BC100 is the premier solution for rapid, preservation-grade digitization of bound and loose materials, designed to meet the highest demands of cultural heritage institutions.
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