Albanian Cultural Heritage in Digital Area

Living in the new era of “Bridging the Digital Divide: making the world’s cultural and scientific heritage accessible to all”, the article aims to present the mission of Albanian librarian community as a “builder” of “virtual cultural bridges” between the past and present, by focusing mainly to the National Library of Albania. Such article provides a shortly background information on the technological revolution development in Albania and increased clients/users attention to digital information and/or digital content in the rich cultural environment where we are leaving. The author pays attention to Albanian National Library Strategy as the keeper of National Memory, its role in the knowledge age of Internet, its initiatives/projects in the national or international level, its achievements in building the Albanological Digital Library (e-Albanica), as well as its impact on the broader librarian community. Focusing on Albanian librarians’ efforts to make available on-line at anytime and anywhere the cultural resources for all users,even for the generations to come,the study provides the promotion of Albanian richness cultural heritage in the world portals of present time, as well as the preserving of the cultural and scientific treasure. As a conclusion, the “Albanian Cultural Heritage by a click of mouse” is a “new channel” in the universe of knowledge breaking the concept of “physical boundaries”, “building bridges” and “connecting cultures across the world”.


Introduction
Nowadays, the digitization of cultural and scientific heritage has become a world-wide phenomenon and the interest of librarians and information professionals community is increasing, as well as considering that in all over the world several initiatives are undertaken and a lot of conferences are organized in relation to application of information technologies in the field of digitization, the topic of development of "Albanian Digital Library" comes with a background information about technological developments.

Technological Revolution and Information Sector in the New Millennium
In the early 1990s, the wave of democratic changes in South-Eastern European Countries affected even the Albanian coast. Nowadays, citizens feel free to easily navigate, search and find through different ways everything that they need in a new information era without barriers and restrictions by facilitating more and more the "MAGICAL technological revolution" such as: computers, laptops, mobile phones, smart phones, iPods, I Phones, tablets, e-Kindles, Internet, -tools that change their everyday life.
Currently, at the time when "There is nothing permanent except change" [1], the Albanian librarian community is living in an era where the explosion of technological revolution has broken the "physical boundaries' between "countries" and traditional concepts such as: Space-Time-Distance and "library walls". At the time when Internet is transforming the entire information society, the concept of change into perspective consists of looking at the "Five Laws of Librarianship", especially to the fifth one as it is proposed by one of the greatest librarians of all times, S.R. Ranganathan of India "The Library is a Growing Organism" [2]. In today's high-tech era, the digital information is bombarding all over the world including even the Memory Institution. Nowadays, a huge mass of cultural or scientific information is becoming more and more available through a lot of portals that allow users to have infinitely options to choose and navigate in the virtual cyberspace.
In this context, "Bridging the Digital Divide: making the world's cultural and scientific heritage accessible to all" [3], is one of the most important mission of librarian community, -as a "builder" of "virtual cultural bridges" between the past and present. Over the last 20 years, dramatic changes in Albanian society have occurred by positively influencing even the library community where the libraries remain as mediators of the accumulated cultural heritage.
"Digital books offer new opportunities for access to knowledge, at reduced costs and over wide geographical areas. Traditional books are still powerful technology: failsafe, portable and standing the test of time. All forms of books make a valuable contribution to education and the dissemination of culture and information. The diversity of books and editorial content is a source of enrichment that we must support through appropriate public policies and protect from uniformity. This bibliodiversity is our common wealth, making books much more than a physical object, for they are our most beautiful invention for sharing ideas beyond the boundaries of space and time" [4].
Since a lot of digitization initiatives are under way over the entire world and taking into account the European Council Recommendation: "A common access point for Europe's digital cultural heritage", the digital initiatives could not be missed in Albania. In the end of XX century, at the time when "digital flowers" started to flourish day after day in "Albanian garden", "garden librarians" became more conscientious for their increasing role in "Digital Revolution" by visualizing the future of users with the conviction that libraries in future will depend on what librarians have done today.
In the society of cultural diversity, paying attention to the local and/or national cultural heritage was/is/will be a priority objective for numerous cultural institutions or libraries involved in digital activities even in the future. However, the study is mainly focusing on National Library of Albania (NLA) as the National Memory keeper of cultural heritage, as well as a leader in preserving and promoting cultural heritage and cultural memories of the nation in world portals.

Automation Project-background
While the national information infrastructure did not exist, the NLA, that is, the main library institution that welcomed the first PCs in 1990, began the first steps towards electronic catalog in 1994 thanks to CDS/ISIS, constructed a local network (LAN) in 1998, installed an integrated library software (Adlib) in 1999 and made searchable library database through OPAC in 2000consists of one of the pioneer's institutions that had implemented the news technologies in our country. In the end of December 2016, the automated catalog of NLA contained 395,761 records. As the responsible institution for providing access to the national heritage, the NLA staff has been distinguished for its serious efforts to be ready for Europe Vision 2020 by building digital "bridges" and bringing the past and present digital content in the hand of everyone, at anytime and anywhere for all citizens.
Bearing in mind the IFLA/UNESCO Manifesto Recommendation providing "Equal access to cultural and scientific heritage of mankind is every person's right and help promote learning and understanding of the richness and diversity of the world, not only for the present generation, but also for the generations to come" [5], the National Library of Albania started to compile pilot projects and find intelligent and economic solutions in order to make the "digital dream" a "reality". In the present decade, ICT's impact is evident. New library trends are powerfully growing and the access at any time and from everywhere to usable information/knowledge/treasure "rooms" is "without door". Therefore, the digitalization of National Heritage is not a myth, but it represents a reality.

Digital Library Centre
Taking into account that the new millennium future is considered to be digital in accordance with the European Council Recommendations, the National Library of Albania policy vigorously advocates the necessity of a Digital Library Center. The constitution of such kind of center builds more digital collections, offers more and more possibilities and/or accesses to digital cultural and scientific contents with a "mouse click" to all treasures of humanity.
The new founded laboratory was inaugurated in 2013 and is equipped with the latest news technological tools. Such laboratory provides not only a rapid mass digitalization of national heritage, but it also provides high quality access to digital library collections and services to global online community.   The NLA is the holder of national cultural and scientific heritage. In such context, the archive collections, antiquaries, manuscripts, maps and Albano-Balcanological collections constitute assets of great value among the NLA's library materials.

Projects
As a Memory Institution that preserves the memory of mankind, the above-mentioned special collections represent "diamond" stones in the whole universe. The Albanian librarians, -as members of global librarian community and "bridge builders" of virtual "world castle memory", -are conscious for their responsible mission as cultural heritage keepers in the new digital era, which is important for the present and future. In 2009, the National Library of Albania started to develop its own Digital Library Strategy. The first 206 Albanian Cultural Heritage in Digital Area Albanian Albanological Digital Library was baptized e-ALBANICA, which succeeded in making available its collections to a wider readership by creating a gateway to national heritage resources from XV-XIX centuries in Albanian and/or foreign languages concerning the history and culture of Albania. In this point of view, the further development of digital library strategy is an imperative necessity for NLA.
In the end of September 2017, 5300 "digital objects" are counted in this small "Albanian digital village". Such "digital objects" include: antiquarian books, manuscripts, rare maps collection, Albanian periodicals, books (without copyright), bibliographies and generally satisfy the needs and requirements of clients/users. In the meantime, around 900 "digital objects" are currently online, while the others can be accessible indoor. Furthermore, the Department of Information and New Technologies is working to make available online all the digital collections and to periodically increase the new units.
The antiquary collection consists of a rare and precious publication of XV-XVIII centuries, bookbinding's, decorated books and incunabula. The earliest publication containing data on Albania dates on 1473. In such a special collection, the following works and publications are preserved: works published in Albanian language; original works of Albanian authors (Budi, Bardhi The entire rare collection is available online: http://www.bksh.al/gsdl/cgi-bin/library.exe?e=d-01000-00 ---off-0hartat--00-1--0-10-0---0---0prompt-10---4-------0-1 l--11-en-50---20-about---00-3-1-00-0-0-11-1-0utfZz-8-00 &a=d&c=hartat&cl=CL2.10 The manuscripts collection belongs to XV-XX centuries. Such collection contains gold decorated documents with illuminated ornaments, beautiful miniatures, extraordinary calligraphy where the majority is in oriental languages, such as: Arabic, Turkish or Persian language, and a small number of them is in Western and Albanian languages. The content of the said collection consists of a religious, historic, linguistic, literary and scientific nature. In this collection, treaties of savants or philosophers can be distinguished, along with different collection of poets. The manuscripts collection constitutes asset of great value for the heritage of Albanian and European culture.
Among the works of Albanian scholars, studies on Albanian language or Albanian people, as well as studies on their customs, traditions etc., a good number of works of well-known scholars, such as: Pouqueville, Xylander, Hahn, Bopp, Meyer, Jokle, Sufflay, Thaloczy, Babinger, Iorga etc. are also preserved. This collection includes editions from 1800 until nowadays and serves as a basic literature for albanlogical studies. Currently, the center of Albanological studies is concentrated in Albania and the basic literature for these studies is found in NLA.
These treasures consist of European cultural heritage's representations through the centuries and play an important role in human sciences enabling the NLA to be ranked besides its homologues libraries in the new digital era with a special project.

International Level
NLA has been included in different European projects. Due to the involvement in FUMAGABA project, NLA became a full member of The European Library (TEL) and had opportunities to make searchable its collections via TEL portal. FUMAGABA was the first opportunity for National Library of Albania to widely promote the Albanian cultural heritage in the European portal, that is, a portal which actually also "speaks" in Albanian language.
The NLA's digital objects, -distributed even via EUROPEANA (a multi-lingual online collection of millions of digitized items from European libraries, archives, museums and audiovisual collections), -are easily searchable through the world website for all the clients/users. In 2009, a partnership invitation came from UNESCO and Library of Congress with the aim to include the Albanian digital cultural heritage in the World Digital Library by giving us the opportunity to be listed as a partner in the world digital portal.