Digital Library: Technology in the Service of Cultural Development in Matanzas

In 2007, a beautiful and useful project emerged in Matanzas that has come to partially alleviate the consequences of the existing crisis in the country’s printing industry.

Nineteen years have passed since that happy idea, which now gathers around 185 gigabytes of books of varied genres and themes, for all audiences, according to writer and specialist of the literature section of the Provincial Center of Houses of Culture, Luis Lexander Pita, one of the promoters of the digital library, whose management is today in his charge.

«We already have almost five million books. This project began to be assembled in 2007, thanks to the help and the idea of our dear friends Norge Céspedes and Daneris Fernández.

«I came from Havana with the assignment that the writers of the municipalities of Matanzas province would have books that could rarely reach the municipalities. In a conversation with these two writers, they told me: and why not the digital book? And the book is there.»

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These achievements are also due to the collaboration of many friends and colleagues from Cuba and other parts of the world who donate between 30 and 50 new books each day.

The digital library makes available to readers the opportunity to possess texts whose acquisition would be very difficult in printed format, aided by the benefits of technology in favor of culture.

In this way, both readers benefit — by receiving copies that satisfy their cognitive or entertainment needs — and authors, whose books reach a greater number of audiences.

«Also on Facebook, where I generally visualize the books, we already have five thousand clients, not only from Cuba but from many other countries in the world such as Mexico, Spain, brigades of internationalists who are in Ethiopia and Angola, who sometimes ask us for the books we disseminate on social networks.»

Having a virtual library also guarantees students, professors, and researchers materials for carrying out degree theses and other types of teaching work, related or not to literature.

The digital library, promoted by the Provincial Book and Literature Center in Matanzas, joins the cultural programming of Matanzas, with a habitual presence at the International Book Fair.