AMIA Spring 2021

The Mexican Coordination of Historical and Cultural Memory (CMHCM, by its initials in Spanish) was created in November 2018 by the current president of Mexico Andrés Manuel López Obrador. Within CMHCM attributes and responsibilities is to create a digital repository that brings together digital objects and collections regarding Mexico´s bio-cultural, historical and artistic legacy from across GLAMUR institutions. In order to meet this aim, in February 2020 -with the name of Memórica-, an initial version of the digital repository was launched. This paper will describe the efforts and decision making processes behind the project. We will argue how Memórica seeks to provide a robust platform and a conceptual framework that will enable the collection, management, aggregation and retrieval of digital collections in a useful and reusable way. We will introduce the technological infrastructure of Memórica thus describing how it is built upon existing technologies which have been already tested within projects of similar scale and potential. In addition to this, we will outline how the repository attempts to facilitate sustainable innovation through APIs, interoperability, efficient scalability, containers, among others. Finally, we will highlight how the use of free and open source tools, libraries and codes, as well as controlled vocabularies and ontologies, will provide Memórica with the capacity to harvest and collect data from digital platforms, memory organisations and individuals in Mexico and worldwide.