Digital collections: practices of preservation and treatment of works

Given the current context, an age of technological innovations, thinking about old books in the printed format and not correlating them to the new moment is perhaps not the best of the alternatives, especially if we consider paper’s fragility. However, a question is necessary: What, after all, are the advantages of using digital support in the process of preserving a literary collection? Regarding the possible answers, we can say that there are many benefits gained from this process. Among them, we have the ease and speed of access to data and information, in addition to the democratization of knowledge. Thus, thinking of such advantages, the present study aims to present the possibilities of research in digital collections, as well as the preservation practices executed with literary collections in the city of Caxias-MA. In this article, we detail quantitative and qualitative researches that consist of data organization and systematization processes, available on the website Digital Library of Literature in Maranhão (https://www.literaturamaranhense.ufsc.br), these researches are based on the ideas of Boeres and Faria (2012), Braga and Diemer (2010), Cúrcio (2006), Di Giorgi (1980), Freitas (2007), Greenhalgh (2011), Lopes (2017), Mota (2014), Monteiro (2009), Reifschneider (2008), Rocha (2012), Santarém Segundo (2014), Sousa and Assis (2018), Sousa, Correia and Assis (2018), Scheibe (2008) and Valle and Araújo (2005).