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’s Digital 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, Balseros: Cuban Rafting Crisis

Setting the Stage for Library & Faculty Collaborations

Digital Media Lab A 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 assistants Equipment: 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 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 exhibitdocumentarynarrative 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…