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LACC, FIU Libraries Awarded Prestigious TICFIA Grant, May 2005

The Latin American and Caribbean Center and the Libraries at Florida International University, in consortium with the University of Central Florida, the University of Florida, the University of the Virgin Islands and five Caribbean partners, have been awarded a U.S. Department of Education Technological Innovation and Cooperation for Foreign Information Access (TICFIA) grant to build the Digital Library of the Caribbean (dLOC). This award grants approximately $450,000 for a four-year period beginning in October 2005 and running through September 2009. The dLOC is one of only ten awards granted each cycle.

The Digital Library of the Caribbean is a multifaceted and collaborative international digital library project that will preserve and increase access to valuable resources for the study of the Caribbean and the advancement of Caribbean Studies. The dLOC will be an umbrella for digital projects and collections from and about the Caribbean that might exist in isolation at a single institution, thus providing a critical mass of resources in a single space. This digital library will comprise collections that examine the similarities and differences in histories, cultures, languages and governmental systems throughout the Caribbean and circum-Caribbean.

The dLOC will use Federal funds to meet the following goals:

  • Increase access to Caribbean research resources by digitizing and making available through centralized searching collections of note, in English, French, and Spanish, including from the Archives Nationales d’Haiti, Caribbean Community (CARICOM), Fundación Global Desarrollo y Democracia (Dominican Republic), National Library of Jamaica, and Universidad de Oriente (Venezuela);
  • Build capacity by developing a multi-layered and comprehensive digitization training program for international partners;
  • Advance Caribbean Studies by building an aggressive and engaging outreach program that delivers these collections to scholars, to the classroom, and to the general public;
  • Cultivate the development of new research initiatives among Caribbean scholars by providing a supportive framework to disseminate this work;
  • Ensure sustainability of the dLOC by consolidating the organizational framework, both in governance and technical infrastructure.
Key project personnel at FIU include: Dr. Eduardo Gamarra, Latin American and Caribbean Center, as Principal Investigator, Catherine Marsicek, Libraries’ Latin American and Caribbean Information Center, as co-Director and Gail Clement, Libraries’ Digital Collections Center, as Training Coordinator. A full-time Project Coordinator will be hired for years two, three and four to help oversee the project. Please contact Catherine Marsicek with any questions, (305) 348-2228, marsicek@fiu.edu.


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Last updated:
May 2, 2005