About the institution
Created in 1990, the Diego Barros Arana Center is a research unit that serves as a bridge between its work and the academic community.
Through its research, principally in the fields of history and the social sciences, the Center pursues a two-fold aim: to increase awareness of Chile’s cultural heritage and to offer new interpretations of the country’s history and social reality.
In recent years, Chilean society has been undergoing significant changes as a result of the country's modernization, leading to greater plurality and diversity and triggering interest in recovering, reaffirming or reconstituting old identities. In this context, the Center has set itself the challenge of responding to these demands and putting its results at the service of the country’s citizens.
In addition to publishing studies and, for example, bibliographies of sources related to Chile’s history, Diego Barros Arana Center organizes workshops and temporary exhibitions. Its collections of publications comprise principally:
- Society and culture
- Anthropology
- Sources for the history of the Republic
- Sources for the study of the colonial period
- Folklore.
The Center also houses two libraries:
- Darwin Library, containing original texts by Charles Darwin and Robert FitzRoy
- Foundations of the Construction of Chile Library. A joint project with the Catholic University of Chile and the Chilean Chamber of Construction, this library contains over 100 documents, published 1850 and 1950, about the construction of Chile in terms of infrastructure, including educational and healthcare facilities. In addition, it contains the accounts of visitors to Chile, including a re-edition of the studies of the country’s history, botany and zoology published in the mid-nineteenth century by French naturalist Claudio Gay.
This research center is named after Diego Barros Arana (1830-1907), one of Chile’s great historians and author of the 16-volume “Historia General de Chile” (General History of Chile).
