OpenCon is the international conference on open access to scientific and academic knowledge, open education, and open data, specifically aimed at students. The 2014 and 2016 editions were held in Washington, 2015 in Brussels, 2017 in Berlin, and 2018 in Toronto. OpenCon supports satellite events, which have taken place in 25 countries. This year, the third Latin American version was held in Colombia - the OpenCon Latam 2019. Matias Butelman from Bibliohack attended the conference in Bogotá to present his talk "Opening Libraries, Archives and Museums in Latin America: A Situated Challenge".
Later, with the help of Yenny Valencia and Isabel Henao from Bibliotecas Comfama in Medellín, and Camila Amado Rivera and María Juana Espinosa from BibloRed (Bogotá's Public Library Network), we conducted an experimental assembly of a self-buildable digitization stand designed by Bibliohack on the last day of OpenCon.
The challenge for Bibliohack was to provide the information and know-how needed to build a functional overhead scanner prototype in a distant location, to be assembled by people without technical or maker backgrounds, testing the feasibility of this manufacturing approach in different environments. With Matías' remote guidance, Yenny, Isabel, Camila, Juana and other volunteers assembled the device at the Science and Technology building of the National University of Colombia in Bogotá, while we simultaneously built a twin device in Buenos Aires. Through short videos and photo exchanges, we sent assembly instructions and answered questions from Argentina. María Juana Espinosa coordinated the laser cutting of parts with a local Bogotá supplier in the days before assembly. Other materials and tools were also sourced locally. All plans and diagrams used are openly available in our repository.
The experience was very successful - the device was built quickly and digitization tests were conducted after the event. We only needed experienced help for the electrical wiring installation.
The Buenos Aires clone was destined for Argentina's National Academy of History, while the Colombian prototype should go to Bogotá's Gabriel García Márquez Library.
During this visit, we also co-organized the event Opening Collections in Latin America with the Digital Humanities Master's program at Universidad de los Andes and BibloRed.
Image Gallery
The schematics, blueprints, and assembly instructions for this device are openly available like all materials produced by Bibliohack. The MDF cutting files can be downloaded here. Note: Some issues observed in this prototype are being corrected in the next standard overhead stand model to be released in 2020, so we don't recommend using this particular design.
