Open Archive is an app that celebrates the 80th anniversary of Fondo de Cultura Economica (FCE), one of the most important publishing houses in the Spanish language. It features a selection of documents of great historical importance to the house, and to the publishing industry in Mexico and the world of books in general.
With this app, you can learn the secrets of the craft, discover the evolution of designs and fonts, and go back in time with news, stories, and radio shows across decades. Read letters from Daniel Cosío Villegas, Carlos Fuentes, Octavio Paz, Jorge Luis Borges, and other authors. Explore first book editions, photographs, audio recordings, iconography, and other documents, and their relationship through maps, timelines, in-content hotspots and links, media galleries, search, and other functionalities that make this journey through eighty years of history an unprecedented experience.
Curated by Yael Weiss, this app was introduced in 2014 as a part of the year-long celebrations marking 80 years of FCE, with the goal to open its archive and make it accessible to the public for free. While archives were once synonymous with concentration and safekeeping, thanks to initiatives like these, they’re now available to everyone.