Post-Custodial Preservation and Latin America

Source: Colección Conflicto Armado del Museo de la Palabra y la Imagen
Source: Colección Conflicto Armado del Museo de la Palabra y la Imagen

The Benson Latin American Collection has established itself as a leader in the area of post-custodial archives — a systematic approach to preservation that places emphasis on providing for original materials to remain in the possession of its creators or cultural parentage. Such notable examples of the practice by the Benson are the projects that make up the Human Rights Documentation Initiative — including the Genocide Archive of Rwanda and the Guatemalan National Police Historical Archive — and Primeros Libros, a project to digitize the first books printed in the New World.

Most recently, though, staff from LLILAS Benson Latin American Studies and Collections and the Libraries have been building upon a project — initially funded from a 2014 Mellon grant award — that takes a more comprehensive approach to preserving the culture and history of Latin America.

The Latin American Digital Initiatives (LADI) repository, currently represents the collaborative efforts of LLILAS Benson with three Central American organizations on four distinctive projects:

Initial work was completed and the website for LADI was launched last November, and recently, the site (and the team that built it) was awarded the Excellence in Digital Libraries Award from the Texas Digital Library.

Theresa Polk, post-custodial archivist at the Benson and one of the project’s leads, is gratified by the success of the project, and looks forward to its future potential.

“It was tremendously exciting to see how the metadata facilitated these disparate collections talking to one another and to other Benson digital collections,” says Polk. “As the site continues to evolve, new collections are added, and researchers begin to actively engage it, we hope it will facilitate new insights into human rights scholarship in the region.”

Snaps from The Foundry

Photo by Stephen LIttrell (@swl).
Photo by Stephen LIttrell (@swl).

As the last of the equipment was being installed and tested for the opening of The Foundry, resident mobile photography aficionado and Collections Logistics Librarian Stephen Littrell took his smartphone by the Fine Arts Library to capture some images from around the space in its pristine glory. Check ’em out.

And if you’d like to see the various 3-D printers, laser cutters, milling machines, virtual reality equipment and more in action, then join us next week for a ribbon cutting and open house at FAL, 12:30-2:30 p.m. on Wednesday, September 7.

Welcome UT20 and Returning Longhorns!

Vice Provost and Director of the UT Libraries Lorraine Harricombe with the Longhorn Singers.
Vice Provost and Director of the UT Libraries Lorraine Haricombe with the Longhorn Singers.

Welcome to our incoming class and welcome back to our returning students!

It is with much excitement that I invite you into the many UT Libraries facilities across campus and also online.  While you were gone, we have updated our spaces, hired several new colleagues, installed new technologies to help orient you about our spaces, events and collections in the Perry-Castañeda Library, the largest library on campus.  At UT Libraries’ nine facilities you will find professionals with distinctive expertise committed to assist you in your scholarly work.  In the PCL you will find state of the art technology rich classrooms, gender neutral bathrooms, the University Writing Center, Stem Study spaces and the Scholars Commons for quiet study.  Just steps away from the new and vibrant pedestrian walkway on Speedway, the PCL is already open 24/5 starting on this first day of class.

In the Doty Fine Arts Building, the new 3900 sq. ft. Foundry in the Fine Arts Library will officially open on September 7. In the meantime you are invited to check out the video wall, the 3D printers, sound recording studio and more to support hands-on learning for the entire UT community.

Great libraries make great universities, and we will continually strive to make ourselves and our university greater, because all that starts here, changes the world — one student, one faculty member, one researcher, one mind at a time.

We are here for you onsite or online at http://www.lib.utexas.edu/