Digital Library of the Caribbean at ACURIL & ALA

The Association of Caribbean University, Research and Institutional Libraries (ACURIL) 2008 Conference included many presentations, at least two of which spoke on the Digital Library of the Caribbean (dLOC). Brooke Wooldridge and Marilyn Ochoa (both of dLOC, from FIU and UF respectively) held a workshop on usability for the dLOC contributor tools entitled “dLOC Toolkit and Usability Testing: A User-­Centered Approach to Improve Electronic Resource Design.” OCLC’s Karen Calhoun presented “Digital Library Dreams,” on ways that research resources are being brought to student and researchers of and in the Caribbean, and how the dreams of effective resource delivery are coming true, with the Digital Library of the Caribbean among other resources fulfilling those dreams.
The American Library Association’s (ALA) annual conference will feature another presentation on dLOC, within the OCLC sponsored “Microfilm to Digital Roadshow.” Within this program, I’ll be presenting on dLOC’s success as a large microfilm digitization project, among its many other successes. I haven’t prepared my presentation notes yet, and this month is awfully busy so I may not post them until after the conference. In the meantime, I’ll be working with the University of Florida Libraries’ Latin American Collection experts, who are essential in all aspects of the dLOC’s microfilm digitization, as well they are for aspects of UF’s contributions to dLOC.
While we’re working on continued digitization, collection enhancement, collaboration with partners, and my presentation, dLOC is readily available for everyone. dLOC allows Open Access (no signons, passwords or anything of the sort) to over 3,400 titles with 9,641 items and 386,475 pages. We’re nearing the half-million pages mark for dLOC and we’ve really just gotten started in some senses. Because digitization is so labor-intensive, even as aided by the wonderful dLOC toolkit, because many partners have only recently joined, and because microfilm digitization is time-intensive, we’re essentially still only ramping up our production speed. We should expect to see both more materials to continue loading and materials to load at a more rapid pace in the future. For now, see what we’ve already loaded on www.dloc.com, which includes an “all items list” in text and thumbnail image views.