Laurie N. Taylor April 30th, 2008
In the next few months, folks from the Digital Library Center will be traveling to meet with some of our partners, and to meet new friends. Our upcoming travel includes:
- May 8: Erich Kesse (director), Mark Sullivan (programmer), and Brooke Wooldridge (dLOC Coordinator, from Florida International University) are going to Washington, DC to meet with the World Digital Library based at the Library of Congress about the Digital Library of the Caribbean (dLOC)
- May 11-14: Erich, Brooke, and Mark are off to meet with the US Embassy in Haiti and the National Archives in Haiti about the Digital Library of the Caribbean (dLOC) and establishing a digitization center in Haiti
- May 14-18: Mark joins Brooke to travel to Guyana to meet with CARICOM
- May 24-31: Jane Pen (Metadata & Quality Control) is visiting Taiwan and will be meeting with the library at Tamkang University (淡江大學).
- June 26-July 2: Laurie Taylor (Digital Projects Librarian) will be going to the American Library Association Conference in Anaheim, California where she’s hoping to see the Disney Archives and to find a partner for the comics collection and the Barks’ materials
We’ll probably have other meetings and explorations in the near future, so let us know if you’ll be in the same area and would like to meet for coffee and great conversation about digital projects.
Laurie N. Taylor April 7th, 2008
The Digital Library Center has been working on getting legal materials online for the Caribbean and from other areas in our collections. Most recently, we’ve added to our law collection with Hansard’s British Parliamentary Debates, which are one of the best sources of the political record for the United Kingdom [1803-1891]. We’re almost done digitizing the 2nd series [1820-1830, 25 volumes] of the Debates, and later projects will digitize the rest provided they’re still in need. The University of Southampton is also working on Parliamentary Publications and related materials.
In addition to Hansard’s, the University of Florida Digital Collections includes Florida Law, with publications from the Florida House of Representatives and Florida Water Law, a cooperative project to develop and maintain a history of water management in Florida.
The Digital Collections also include law and legal materials from many Caribbean countries and organizations:
- Diario de sesiones del Congreso de la Republica de Cuba (Journal of Sessions of the Congress of the Republic of Cuba), with the cumulation of the sessions as well, Gaceta oficial de la Republica de Cuba (the Offical Gazette of the Republic of Cuba), and Diario de sesiones de la Comision consultiva de la republica de Cuba bajo la administracion provisional de los Estados Unido (Journal of meetings of the Advisory Commission of the Republic of Cuba under the interim administration of the United States)
- Trinidad and Tobago revised ordinances (1950) which “contains the ordinances of the colony in force on the 31st day of December, 1950, exclusive of those reserved by ordinance no. 23 of 1949 and by subsequent proclamations”
- Materials from CARICOM (the Caribbean Community Secretariat)
- Belize Weekly Newsletter, published by the Government Information Services
- Revue de la Société de législation (Legislative Journal of Haiti), La Constitution hatienne de 1889 et sa re?vision (a work on constitutional law in Haiti), and Proclamation par Toussaint Louverture, General en Chef de l’armee de Saint-Domingue, aux Administrations Municipales de la Colonie et a ses Concitoyen (Proclamation by Toussaint Louverture, General-in-Chief of the army in Santo Domingo, the Municipal Government of the Colony and its Concitoyen)
- Official Gazette of Barbados which is especially interesting when read along with newspapers, including the earlier Royal Gazette and Colonist Daily and the much earlier Royal Gazette: Bermuda Commercial and General Advertiser and Recorder because it shows how some of the laws and concerns developed over time
Along with the legal materials for the Caribbean, the Digital Library of the Caribbean includes newspapers (with historical newspapers like The Mid-Ocean from Hamilton, Bermuda in 1899, more recent news with Unite published in English and French from the Haitian Unity Council and the Dominica Star, and recent newspapers as well), audio, video, and all sorts of other materials like Annales du Conseil Souverain de la Martinique (Annals of the Sovereign Council of Martinique) and Nouvelliste, a daily journal for Haitian commercial, agricultural, and literary information.
Even with all of these materials, we’re actively much, much more including British Caribbean materials for countries when they were British Colonies. As we load more materials, it’s really interesting to see how the law is influenced by and impacts everyday life in the newspapers and art in the literature of the time and after.
Laurie N. Taylor March 12th, 2008
In working on other projects, I stumbled across this poster on the Digital Library of the Caribbean from last year. The Digital Library of the Caribbean (dLOC) is a cooperative digital library for resources from and about the Caribbean and circum-Caribbean. All materials in dLOC are Open Access for everyone to see, but any rights remain with the owners or with the contributing partners. This is a great example of collaboration creating materials for all to use, while supporting the creators and their communities and nations. The digitized materials include Caribbean cultural, historical and research materials currently held in archives, libraries, and private collections.
The poster describes this all more fully, but I’m most impressed with the rights management and with the centralized technical infrastructure, which provides a scaffolding for new projects to begin digitization as well as an umbrella collection online to ensure that even new collections contribute to the growing critical mass of resources in a single space, allowing the searching across collections, while also allowing for individual collections to be searched on their own once ready. The poster says more though, so check it out (in Google Presentation Mode and the slide alone).
Laurie N. Taylor March 4th, 2008
I’m currently in the Bahamas visiting the College of the Bahamas. I got in yesterday and was lucky enough to be here in time for the 10th Annual Lenten Tea Party, at Dr. Rhonda Chipman-Johnson’s residence on Emery Street in Highland Park, with Mrs. Mavis Collie as the MC. I really wish I had brought any sort of audio recording equipment with me so I could have captured and shared more from the event because it was wonderful. The tea party was not only enjoyable and entertaining, it also included Bahamanian History on Grant’s Town, Over the Hill, and future shock from welcome progress (and the less welcome new problems that come along with progress). Today I learned more about the College of the Bahamas Library. The College of the Bahamas Library is facing the same needs and challenges that so many libraries, including the University of Florida Libraries, are facing. The need for more information commons space with computers with internet access for students and the need to put more materials online so students and others can access those materials from anywhere.
The College of the Bahamas Library has the College Archives (with photos, catalogs, fliers on speakers and events, and more) and Special Collections, in addition to the General Collections, Reference, Circulation, IT support, and Technical Services. It was great to see the Library and see how much it contained even outside of specific collections, with historical photos framed and hanging on the walls, paintings celebrating important events also adorning the walls, and other artifacts explaining the history of the College and the Bahamas exhibited throughout the Library. I’m still processing all of the materials I’ve seen and all that I’ve learned, but the photo above is from the tree outside the Library, which has a birdhouse and a sign that reads “Soothing Moments.” The tree with its own beauty and its friendly sign and practical and aesthetically pleasing birdhouse parallels the Library at the College of the Bahamas because both the tree and the Library are friendly, welcoming, beautiful, and incredibly impressive in their ability to multi-task for the benefit of those around. I love what the tree says and represents with its sign and birdhouse, and I’m hoping the University of Florida Libraries might be able to take note and perhaps put up our own birdhouse.
Laurie N. Taylor December 7th, 2007
The Eric Williams Memorial Collection is sponsoring a “School Bags” Essay Competition. The deadline is right around the corner, December 17, 2007, but the prizes great! Read more about it Eric Williams School Bags Essay Competition Flier
Laurie N. Taylor October 28th, 2007
UF is a partner in the Digital Library of the Caribbean (dLOC), so I was excited to see that the book Caribbean Libraries in the 21st Century: Changes, Challenges, and Choices edited by Shamin Renwick and Cheryl Peltier-Davis is available. The table of contents with all twenty-five chapter titles and authors is listed on the Library of Congress website and gives an useful sense of the full book, and I hope to grab the UF Library copy tomorrow and I’ll post a review as soon as I’ve read it. It looks really interesting for my more pragmatic purposes and for all interested in library collaborations and in the evolution of libraries.