Ecuador Archives and Libraries: Difference between revisions

:The National Archive is the leading institution in the custody and administration of Documentary Heritage, protecting and caring for the country's written memory and establishing technical rules and procedures for archival description.

:The files that rest in the Historical Archive 'Alfredo Pareja Diezcanseco' of the Ecuadorian Foreign Ministry were included in the Unesco Memory of the World Register, reported the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Ecuador.  Among these documents are 69 volumes containing the files of '''2,445 cases of naturalizations of foreign citizens between 1899 and 1968.'''

:This Archive includes five Funds that are: Protocols, Trials, Historical Library, Library of the Historical Research Center of Guayaquil, and Microfilms. Of these, the first two are of interest, whose extreme dates are 1635 to 1888, with a total of 8,000 documents. There are, however, 120 unclassified files, and there are only inventories from 1830 to 1888.

:Located in the circular, glass-plated, landmark building of the Casa de la Cultura is one of the country’s largest collections of Ecuadorian art, with magnificent works of pre-Hispanic and colonial religious art. The museum collection includes more than 1000 ceramic pieces dating from 12,000 BC to AD 1534, with highlights being ‘whistle bottles’ from the Chorrera culture, figures showing skull deformation practiced by the Machalilla culture, wild serpent bowls from the Jama-Coaque and ceramic representations of tzantzas (shrunken heads).  The ‘coin axes’ from the Milagro-Quevedo culture and the famous ceremonial stone chairs of the Manteños culture are also interesting. Displays in the Sala de Oro (Gold Room) include a magnificent radiating golden sun mask. Archaeological exhibits include arrowheads from Ecuador’s first nomadic hunter-gatherers, the Valdivia culture (Ecuador’s first settled agriculturalists) and the Inca.