Voces del Prado

The challenges of the Library: Relocation and enhancement of the collections

Javier Docampo Capilla, Head of the Library, Documentation and Archives Area, 2005-2016

There were a few difficulties, but I did have a very good team and was generally supported by all the staff. The first, fundamental step was relocating everything within the Casón. That was not the purpose that had been planned when the Ministry allocated the building to the Museum, and it required new works to be able to use the building as a Library and Study Centre. Aside from that there was the issue of furnishing the area where everything was deposited, which was quite complicated.
We increasingly occupied more space, not due to any ambition on our part but because the collection kept growing, almost unexpectedly. The first area that had been earmarked was insufficient. There were up to five different deposits, fragmented for security reasons. Archives need to be fragmented owing to the risk of fire, so that in the worst case only part of the documents are lost, not the entirety. We got a second area that nearly doubled the storage space, which has been filled little by little and today there is probably very little free space. Another added difficulty was managing the enhancement of the collections, which nearly doubled their size in this period after incorporating several libraries to the Museum.