The launch of the Digital Library of the Caribbean (dLOC)
In May 2004 at the 34th Annual Conference of the Association of Caribbean University, Research and Institutional Libraries (ACURIL), with the theme Electronic Information in the Caribbean: trends and issues, two challenges were highlighted, namely (i) how to preserve information digitally on Caribbean cultural, historical and research materials held in different archives, libraries, and private collections, and (ii) how to make this material accessible to promote and support research (Association of Caribbean University, Research and Institutional Libraries, n.d.). To solve these challenges, it was decided to create a platform with two non-negotiable conditions, namely material must be digitally, as well as freely, available (Asencio, 2017).
Many cooperative meetings focusing on preservation and access led up to the dLOC's official establishment by nine founding partners at a Planning Committee meeting hosted in Puerto Rico on 17 July 2004 (Digital Library of the Caribbean, n.d.a).
The mission of dLOC
The mission of dLOC is to "serve an international community of scholars, students, and citizens by working together to preserve and to provide enhanced electronic access to cultural, historical, legal, governmental, and research materials in a common web space with a multilingual interface" (Digital Library of the Caribbean, 2015).
Collections of dLOC
The dLOC collections "include, but are not limited to: newspapers, archives of Caribbean leaders and governments, official documents, documentation and numeric data for ecosystems, scientific scholarship, historic and contemporary maps, oral and popular histories, travel accounts, literature and poetry, musical expressions, and artifacts" (Digital Library of the Caribbean, n.d.b).
Click here to see some of their collection themes.
References
Asencio, M. (2017). The power of collaboration and communities of practice. Video retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bz1iTL4yYOE
Association of Caribbean University, Research and Institutional Libraries (ACURIL). (n.d.). ACURIL presidents and annual conferences, 1969-2016. Retrieved from https://acuril.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/ACURIL-PRESIDENTS-AND-ANNUAL-CONFERENCES-1969-rev.pdf
Digital Library of the Caribbean (dLOC). (2015). Fact sheet. Retrieved from
Digital Library of the Caribbean (dLOC). (n.d.a). dLOC: a multi-institutional, international digital library: invitation for partner institutions to join dLOC. Retrieved from http://dloc.com/dloc1/about
Digital Library of the Caribbean (dLOC). (n.d.b). About dLOC: FAQ. Retrieved from https://www.dloc.com/dloc1/faq