Digital Library Center Blog | UF

Press Release from FIU: Digital Library of the Caribbean seeks donations to support damaged libraries and archives in Haiti

February 8th, 2010

MIAMI – The Digital Library of the Caribbean (dLOC), an international collaboration of educational, research, governmental and non-governmental institutions that provides access to electronic collections about the Caribbean, is seeking donations and technical assistance for the recovery and protection of Haiti’s libraries and their valuable historical, governmental and cultural resources.

The Digital Library of the Caribbean has initiated the Protecting Haitian Patrimony Initiative, the goal of which is to help the country’s three largest heritage libraries and the National Archives, all of which were damaged in the Jan. 12 earthquake. While the main structures remain standing, one library must be evacuated and most likely demolished and the others suffered significant damage, leaving their collections extremely vulnerable. As a result, significant resources will be needed to protect the already brittle, rare, books and documents, now left in piles and covered with debris.

Bibliothèque haïtienne des Pères du Saint-Esprit (also known as San Martial).
Courtesy of Dominique Franck Simon, director of the Alumni Association for San Martial College.

The damaged institutions have indicated they need gloves, masks, archival boxes and temporary staff to assist in the clean-up. Later, they will need to replace broken shelving, repair or replace damaged electronic equipment and provide more advanced restoration for many of the rarest books and documents.

Laura Probst, dean of FIU Libraries and a dLOC executive committee member, said protecting the historical documents is crucial in the earthquake’s aftermath.

“The collections in these archives represent the collective memory of the Haitian people, their culture, and Haiti’s role in the history of the western hemisphere and the world,” Probst said. “With this initiative we seek to preserve these invaluable resources for Haiti’s future, and for our own.”

FIU has a longstanding partnership with Haiti’s libraries and the National Archives through the Digital Library of the Caribbean and is one of the founding partners and administrators of dLOC, along with the University of Florida and the University of the Virgin Islands.

The Digital Library of the Caribbean’s operations are run out of FIU. Brooke Wooldridge, coordinator of dLOC at FIU, will be traveling to Haiti this week to assist the libraries and archives in documenting their needs and planning for the next phases of their recovery.

The Protecting Haitian Patrimony Initiative at first will channel resources to four institutions in Port-au-Prince:

• Archives Nationales d’Haïti houses both civil and state records, including births, marriage and death certificates, documentation of social works, civil governance and records of the Office of the President and most government ministries.
• Bibliothèque haïtienne des Pères du Saint-Esprit was founded in 1873 by the Fathers of the Holy Spirit. The library holds resources documenting the history of Haiti, French colonization, slavery and emancipation, and 20^th Century records, as well as newspapers and periodicals.
• Bibliothèque haïtienne des Frères de l’Instruction Chrétienne was founded in 1912 by the Christian Brothers.  It served as depository-library for Haitian imprints and holds titles not even available in the National Library.  It also holds one of the most significant collections of Haitian newspapers.
• Bibliothèque National d’Haïti was established in 1940 and also serves as a public library providing resources, study space and research support.  It has a small but significant collection of rare books, manuscripts and newspapers.

For more information or to contribute to the Protecting Haitian Patrimony Initiative, please visit http://www.dloc.com or call dLOC at 305-348-3008.

Media Contact: Madeline Baró at 305-348-2234.

-FIU-

About the Digital Library of the Caribbean (dLOC):
The Digital Library of the Caribbean (dLOC) is an international collaboration of educational, research, governmental and non-governmental institutions that provides access to electronic collections about the Caribbean. It includes the Archives Nationales d’Haïti, Biblioteca Nacional Aruba, Bibliothèque haïtienne des Pères du Saint-Esprit, Bibliothèque Nationale d’Haïti, Belize National Library Service and Information System, Caribbean Community, Caribbean Studies Association, The College of The Bahamas, the Fundaciòn Global Desarollo y Democracia, the National Library of Jamaica, Pontificia Universidad Católica Madre y Maestra, the Universidad de Oriente in Venezuela, the Wider Caribbean Sea Turtle Conservation Network, Florida International University, the University of the Virgin Islands, the University of Central Florida, the University of South Florida and the University of Florida.

About FIU:
Florida International University was founded in 1965 and is Miami’s only public research university. With a student body of more than 38,000, its 17 colleges and schools offer more than 200 bachelor’s, master’s and doctoral programs in fields such as engineering, international relations and law. More than 100,000 FIU alumni live and work in South Florida. FIU has been classified by the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching as a “High Research Activity University”. In August 2009, FIU welcomed the inaugural class of the Herbert Wertheim College of Medicine. For more information about FIU, visit http://www.fiu.edu

The usage statistics for January 2010 for the UF Digital Collections are now online here: http://www.uflib.ufl.edu/ufdc/?m=htu

The top collections continue to be the Digital Library of the Caribbean, the Florida Digital Newspaper Library, and the Baldwin Library of Historical Children’s Literature, with nearly 100.000 hits each in January alone.

The most used collections, and the total numbers with over 10 million hits to the UF Digital Collections since March of 2006, are always impressive. However, my favorite statistics are the most popular items by collection (available for all collections here). For instance, the Digital Library of the Caribbean’s most popular item is Sus mejores poemas by Rubén Darío. It’s been online since April 2008. In that time, it’s had over 30,000 hits.  Similarly, An A B C, for baby patriots has been online only since September of 2008 and it’s already had over 47,000 hits.

The usage statistics for January 2010 are posted alongside all of the prior usage statistics, back to when the UF Digital Collections began in March 2006. The statistics provide a nice quantification of the extensive known usage from the increasingly more frequent patron emails, requests, and compliments. It’s great to see exactly how many more people the UF Digital Collections are reaching, and how much more the UF Digital Collections are assisting with research and creative inquiry.

News Release:

The Center for Research Libraries, an international consortium of university, college and independent research libraries, has released the findings of its preservation audit, in consultation with its Certification Advisory Panel (CAP), certifying Portico as a trustworthy digital repository. The concise report, available at CRL’s website, specifies criteria from TRAC (Trustworthy Repositories Audit & Certification: Criteria and Checklist) that warrant further vigilance and identifies some additional concerns of CRL member institutions. Portico has agreed to address the issues identified by the panel and to make certain disclosures to CRL periodically, to ensure continued certification. CRL’s report marks the first public disclosure of a digital certification review conducted by an independent entity.

Press Release: Eric Williams Centenary Stamp Design Competition

Port of Spain, TRINIDAD and TOBAGO (January 24, 2010) The Eric Williams Memorial Collection (EWMC) at The University of the West Indies and the Trinidad & Tobago Postal Corporation (TT Post) announce the Eric Williams Centenary Stamp Design Competition, co-sponsored by UNESCO (Trinidad and Tobago) and Kelly Services Customs Brokerage, Ltd. The contest runs from January 30 to April 30, 2010.

Since September 25, 2011 marks the 100th birthday of this “Father of the Nation,” Trinidad and Tobago’s Fifth and Sixth Form students are being asked to design a series of commemorative stamps in his honour, an added 50 cents of which will be donated to a Trinidad and Tobago charity. The Centenary stamp, with winner’s and school’s names included, will be sold, subject to availability, from January 1 to December 31, 2011.

Eric Williams was the first Prime Minister of Trinidad and Tobago and head of government for 25 years until his death in 1981. He was also an internationally-renowned historian whose groundbreaking work, the 65-year-old Capitalism and Slavery, not only re-framed the historiography of the British trans-Atlantic slave trade, but also established the contribution of Caribbean slavery to the development of both Britain and America. Popularly referred to as The Williams Thesis, the book continues to inform today’s ongoing debate and remains “years ahead of its time…this profound critique is still the foundation for studies of imperialism and economic development,” according to the New York Times.

Competition judges are: Adrian Camps Campins, historical artist; Kenwyn Crichlow, artist; Kari Elliot, TT Post; Albert Sydney, philatelist. Each school is expected to host its own in-house competition and enter only two students in the national contest. Rules and regulations are being distributed via colour poster to all eligible schools.

The Eric Williams Memorial Collection constitutes the Research Library, Archives & Museum of Eric Williams. It was inaugurated by former US Secretary of State Colin Powell in 1998, and named to UNESCO’s prestigious Memory of the World Register in 1999.

For more information, please contact Erica Williams Connell, The Eric Williams Memorial Collection P.O. Box 561631, Miami, FL 33256-1631, USA. Fax: (305) 271-4160; Websites: www.ericwilliamsmemorialcollection.org; http://www.dloc.com/?m=hiteew

News Release: Samuel Proctor Oral History Program
January 25, 2009

“UF in the Mississippi Delta: Student Reflections on Recording the Civil Rights Movement”

WEDNESDAY, February 17, 6 to 8 p.m.

LOCATION: Civic Media Center, 433 South Main Street, Gainesville, Florida

Co-sponsors and volunteers needed for this event. Please help us spread the word.

UF in the Mississippi Delta: Student Reflections on Recording the Civil Rights Movement will take place on Wednesday, February 17 from 6 to 8 p.m. at the Civic Media Center. Sponsored by the Samuel Proctor Oral History Program and the Civic Media Center. The program will feature a lively multi-media presentation by UF students who have traveled to the Mississippi Delta the past two summers to interview pioneers of the Civil Rights Movement. This program will bring the remarkable visual, musical, and political culture of the Delta to Florida.

The program will also discuss the Oral History Program’s new African American History in Alachua Research project. Find out how to get involved!

Moderated by Dr. Paul Ortiz, director of the Oral History Program.

This event is co-sponsored by the Civic Media Center, and the UF Oral History Club. For more information, please call the Samuel Proctor Oral History Program at 352-392-7168 or email portiz@ufl.edu

Hear History Come Alive!

“Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter.” - Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929-1968)

JISC’s Understanding the Costs of Digitisation (full report and briefing paper) offers an excellent summary of some of the core difficulties facing budgeting for digitization projects.

For those not already mired in digitization project operations, the graphed cost estimates for different projects on pages 44-47 are perhaps the best place to begin. In 3 of the 5 examples, overhead amounted to twice of the actual digitization costs.

To ensure we don’t suffer similar overages, we develop prototypes to estimate costs and associated requirements for projects. In doing so, we still encounter overhead - pushing technology is equal parts exciting and frustrating - but the overhead is manageable.

While the projects themselves have lower overhead through planning, there’s still a good deal of overhead needed to report on and explain project costs because digital projects aren’t comparable, unless designed specifically to be.

Digitisation projects are distinct, and it is not possible to provide a formula (or even approximate figures) to cost a project. [...] Attempting to compare these two projects quantitatively is unhelpful – the numbers could be generated, but without full consideration of the context, they would be meaningless. (page 7)

This document does not contain a formula into which you can input details of your collection and output the cost of the project – there is no standard digitisation project. (page 8 )

It’s nice to see the JISC Report explain what digital folks do on a regular basis - that digital projects are difficult to cost, and that the costs aren’t fungible. It’s also delightfully wonderful that it includes, “Plan the service, not just the project” (briefing paper, page 2). Service should be seen as a core component for any technical work. However in a strictly project-production model, it’s overhead and loss - something to be reduced and prevented. I don’t think anyone disagrees with the importance of service, but it does further complicate the cost model by mixing more discrete (at least on a single project basis) production costs with less quantifiable service costs.

Press release from the USDA National Agricultural Library (PDF here)

United States Department of Agriculture
Research, Education, and Economics
Agricultural Research Service

January 20, 2010

Dear Friends and Colleagues of the USDA National Agricultural Library:

It gives me great pleasure to announce the appointment of Dr. Simon Y. Liu as the new Director of the National Agricultural Library (NAL), effective February 14, 2010.

Dr. Liu currently is an Associate Director of the National Library of Medicine (NLM) and the Director of NLM Computer and Communications Systems in Bethesda, Maryland, a position he has held since May 2000. In addition to a wealth of leadership, program development, management, and other executive experience at NLM, Dr. Liu brings a rich portfolio of professional credentials and skills to the NAL.

As a native of Taiwan, he received his undergraduate training there. In post graduate training in the U.S., he earned master’s degrees in Computer Science, Business Administration, and Government from Indiana University, University of Maryland, and Johns Hopkins University, respectively. He has received two doctoral degrees (Ed.D. in Higher Education and Ph.D. in Computer Science) from George Washington University. He now holds adjunct faculty and graduate school appointments at several of these institutions.

Dr. Liu is active in professional societies and associations and as an Editor of a web technology journal and an information technology professional magazine. Prior to his NLM service, he held information technology and management leadership positions with the U.S. Departments of Justice and Treasury during the mid to late 1990’s following private sector contractor work supporting software development for NASA information systems and space mission studies.

As Director of the National Agricultural Library, Dr. Liu will provide leadership to the world’s largest and most accessible research library focused on agriculture and related subjects. On the basis of this diverse training and experience, Dr. Liu has demonstrated those visionary qualities sought in the new Director to provide innovative technological and strategic approaches to the development and operation of NAL’s next generation library and information systems for effective customer service, partnerships, and stakeholder support.

I wish to express my sincere appreciation to the Search Committee, Evaluation Panel, and the many NAL customers, partners and stakeholders whose proactive interest throughout the search and competitive recruitment process has culminated in the appointment of Dr. Liu.

I look forward to working with Dr. Liu, the NAL staff, and the Library’s diverse and devoted constituencies in the days ahead to assure the ongoing development and success of NAL programs, products, and services.

Sincerely,

EDWARD B. KNIPLING Administrator

Videos of presentation:

• “Politics and Resistance in Twentieth Century Haiti” by Dr. Matthew J. Smith, presentation sponsored by the Digital Library of the Caribbean as part of the 12th Annual Haitian Studies Institute of Florida International University.
• Red and Black in Haiti,  presented at book launch by Dr. Matthew J. Smith

From: UF Center for Latin American Studies

The University of Florida Center for Latin American Studies will sponsor Library Travel Research Grants for summer 2010. Their purpose is to enable faculty researchers from other U.S. colleges and universities to use the extensive resources of the Latin American Collection in the University of Florida Libraries, thereby enhancing its value as a national resource.  The grants are funded by a Title VI National Resource Center grant from the U.S. Department of Education.

Six or more travel grants of up to $1250 each will be made to cover travel and lodging expenses. Grantees are expected to remain in Gainesville for at least one week and, following their stay, submit a brief (2-3 pp.) report on how their work at UF Libraries enriched their research project and offer suggestions for possible improvements of the Latin American Collection. Researchers’ work at the Latin American Collection may be undertaken at any time during the summer, starting May 15, 2010.  All travel must be completed by August 14, 2010. At least one grant will be made to a scholar from a Florida college or university.  Applicants must be US citizens or permanent residents.

The UF Libraries Latin American Collection

The UF Libraries’ Latin American Collection contains one of the finest collections of Latin American materials in the U.S. It consists of over 500,000 volumes, some 50,000 reels of microfilm (many unique and very scarce), renowned newspaper and government-document holdings, and a growing access to computer-based electronic information resources.

Areas of collection focus include all disciplines, although literature, the humanities and the social sciences are best represented. All regions of Latin America are also well represented, with the Caribbean, Circum-Caribbean and Brazil having the deepest holdings, while the Andean and Southern Cone regions are developing strengths. Particularly noteworthy are the Collection’s holdings on religion in the Americas, including Santeria, Rastafarianism and the Ralph Della Cava Collection on Padre Cícero and Brazilian popular religion. Other units of the UF Libraries also contain important resources and researchers are encouraged to utilize them as well. The UF Map Library houses approximately 500,000 maps and atlases, some 50,000 of which deal with Latin American topics. The Science Library has important book and journal holdings on agriculture, tropical conservation, and development. The Special Collections Department has manuscript holdings such as the Rochambeau, Jeremie and the Braga Brothers Sugar Company papers, and the newly acquired Ramón Figueroa Collection of Mexican and Cuban film posters.

Information on the UF Latin American Collection is available at: http://www.uflib.ufl.edu/lac. You can also e-mail Richard Phillips, Director of the Latin American Collection, for further information.

Application Procedure

All applications must be filed electronically.
To apply for a Library Travel Grant, send a letter of intent, brief library research proposal, travel budget, and CV to:

Hannah Covert, Executive Director
Center for Latin American Studies
319 Grinter Hall
telephone: 352-392-0375, Ext. 825
e-mail: hcovert@latam.ufl.edu

Application Deadline

March 2, 2010

From: UF Libraries’ News, Events, and Updates

Students (graduate or undergraduate) making books in book arts and/or fine arts programs across the United States are invited to participate in ARTBOUND by submitting work to a juried artists’ book exhibition and permanent collection at The University of Florida George A. Smathers Libraries!

Entrants are to submit handmade, artists’ books printed in edition. Books printed with letterpress, intaglio, inkjet, and/or screenprint techniques will be considered. We will also consider one-of-a-kind handmade books created in other mediums. We are looking for high quality, original work.

Click HERE to download PDF entry form for ARTBOUND.