The Wichiteca (www.wichiteca.com) He was born in 2022. Celso Cerezo Bregni, entrepreneur, social entrepreneur and co -founder of this proposal for the unified catalog of various academic libraries in Guatemala, comments that the initiative arose from it and glyphs (library software) with the aim of unifying and facilitating access to the information stored in different academic libraries in the country, as it is done in other nations.
Cerezo explains that, while writing his doctoral thesis, he had to enter each of the national libraries one by one. Therefore, he spoke with Rodrigo Arias, of glyphs, with whom he shared the same enthusiasm. From the beginning, he joined the Ana Marina Yol project, a proactive and great experience librarian.
The name of the project is inspired by María Luisa Mulet DesfamS, known as “Wichita”, cherry -paternal grandmother and one of Guatemala’s first librarians.
Mulet Descamps was born in 1925, married Celso Cerezo Dardón and studied at the Faculty of Humanities of the University of San Carlos (Usac), where in 1967 he graduated as a librarian. He was in charge of the Library of the Faculty of Engineering of the USAC. Then, for 25 years, he directed the central library of this Center for Higher Studies and, subsequently, was director of the National Library, a position he held for five years.
The latest collections that have joined this project are those of the Rafael Landívar Universityin August 2024, and the Mariano Gálvez Universitylast January.
“We hope that the Library of the National University and that of the Academy of Geography and History will be added, who have unique and of great interest for scientific research,” adds Cerezo.
Who investigated in Wichiteca?
Since the project began, they have registered 88,258 consultations of more than 47 thousand Individual visitors. The different libraries have been adding one over time.
Wichiteca and Wicha-IA are aimed at the general public: students, teachers and national and international researchers, Cerezo explains. For example, students who carry out research thesis or work will find a repository with more than 40 A thousand thesis available for consultation.
As for scientific researchers, they will have access in one place to the largest bibliographic collection in the country, which includes specialized libraries such as CIRMA and the Guatemala National Library – Luis Cardoza and Aragon. International researchers will be able to consult from their own country different books and literature on Guatemala.
In the long term, it seeks to expand the project to other countries and implement new tools and innovative projects within the portal.
IA implementation
The first week of March the II Wichiteca Meetingunder the motto “Wicha-Ia, your intelligent search”. They attended academics, researchers and personnel from the libraries participating in the platform.
During the event, the first Reference Library with artificial intelligence. The activity, which had as a framework the Pan -American Universityserved to present “Wicha-IA”a tool that accompanies the user in the search for information within the participating academic libraries. Ilonka Matute, director of the Guatemala National Libraryhe performed the first search for materials.
“Our implementation of AI seeks to provide the services of a reference”explains Cerezo:
- It is able to thoroughly understand the information that the user seeks.
- You can work with open questions. Rather “Do they have this or that book?”which can easily be searched in the online catalog of wichiteca.comhe is able to answer questions such as “What do they have about ancient central patios architecture?”
- More than answers, a reference must provide a guide, that is, guide the user about where you can find the information you need.
The important thing to highlight is that Wicha-IF makes searches and recommendations more efficient and precisecompared to other artificial intelligence tools, such as Chatgpt either Gemini of Google. Cerezo adds that the advantages of this technology lie in their contextualization in the country and in the type of collections available. In addition, it allows semantic access to catalogs of all participating libraries, updated per day.
“The same chatgpt that many use does not have this access“Cerezo points out.
Currently, the project is held with their creators’ own funds, who wish to take advantage of this space to invite companies and institutions that value education, research and the role of libraries.