Capturing Caribbean Life & Culture

Jeff Barry

Director, Digital Library Programs & Technology

University of Miami

…another perspective…

Experiencing Caribbean life & culture through digital media.

Overview Miami and the Caribbean University of Miami’s Digital Library Caribbean Literary Studies Faculty Collaborations

Defining the Caribbean

Miami & the Caribbean Commonalities & differences Diaspora Relationship to Latin America

University of Miami’sDigital Library Cuban Heritage Collection Digital Digital Media Lab Caribbean initiatives Imagebase Faculty Fellows

Caribbean Digital Initiatives CHC Digital Caribbean Literary Studies Archivo Teatral Cubano Moderate Cuban Politics, 1952-65 Balseros: Cuban Rafting Crisis

Setting the Stage for Library & Faculty Collaborations

Digital Media LabA centralized facility in the library for exploring the potential to

enhance instruction and research through digital audio and video.

Staffing: full-time lab manager, student assistantsEquipment: 4 digital audio/video editing workstations & 4 digital

imaging workstations

Streaming media The library (quietly) manages streaming

media services for the University. 2001: Streaming media server donated

to library by School of Communication. 2004: Support RealNetworks &

Windows streaming media, exploring QuickTime support.

It’s about CONTENT! Enormous potential for universities to

capture intellectually vibrant events on campus via digital media.

What role can/do/should libraries play in acquiring and managing this content?

Relationship to university archives? To institutional repositories?

Collaboration with Caribbean Literary Studies Caribbean Writers’ Summer Institute Video Archives Electronic Journal

Caribbean Writers’ Summer Institute 1991-1996 Initially funded by

James Michener Directed by Sandra

Paquet Video recording by

School of Communication

Caribbean Writers

Kamau Brathwaite & George Lamming, co-directors of first Caribbean writers institute.

Over 400 video files online featuring notable writers, scholars as well as emerging authors.

Caribbean Literary Video Archives Expand content

beyond writers’ institute (91-96)

Continuing series of readings, conferences.

Oonya Kempadoo, fall 2003

Anthurium: A Caribbean Studies Journal

Peer reviewed, bi-annual

First issue: fall 2003 Second issue: April

2004 Library provides server

space, technological assistance, and guidance on e-publishing

Dealing with Pagination in Anthurium Citations in literary criticisms refer to a

specific page number. How to deal with this issue in an

electronic only publication that has no “pages”.

Followed example of paragraph numbering in Postmodern Culture

But are they paragraphs or endnotes? Where’s the article!

Paragraph numbering is not common and can lead to confusion among readers.

Anthurium’s 2nd issue adopts a different display scheme for paragraph numbering.

“Namsetoura & the Companion Stranger” Original work by Kamau Brathwaite

prepared specifically for Anthurium. Brathwaite utilizes a textual style that he

developed, “video sycorax”. Despite wanting all pages of Anthurium

to be in HTML, we opted to display “Namsetoura” in PDF (84 pages).

Multi-layer Framework

Repository: digital objects (item/metadata in filesystem)

Access: Search & retrieval

exhibit documentary narrative

Interpretive: Repurposing of content by scholars into works of new scholarship

Primary lesson learned

The collaboration with the Caribbean Literary Studies group has worked well due to the vision of a professor who championed the projects and the tireless commitment of grad students.

Digital Library Fellows Three faculty projects selected a year. Provide extensive technological

support, work space in library, and $15,000 (could be used for stipend, grad assistants, research travel, etc).

Conclusion Find inspiring faculty & give them

resources. …foster & nurture…