A couple of weeks ago IFLA released its latest World Report, and for the first time made it available online in a fully searchable database, including a graphical map interface! You can download the full report, or use the maps to select only the sections you are interested in. One of the maps allows you [...]

The Yale Silk Road Database gathers over 6,000 images takes across the Silk Road region by faculty members during site visits between 2006 and 2009. The visits were led by Mimi Hall Yiengpruksawan (Professor, History of Art) with the help of the Council on East Asian Studies at Yale University. The collection will be of [...]

On that same SALALM panel titled “Documenting in Times of Adversity, Survival and Hope” my friend Lynn Shirey presented on a newly acquired collection of slides by photographer Andrés Romero Spethman, documenting Chilean Protest Murals during the dictatorship of Gen. Augusto Pinochet (1973-1990). The collection was recently purchased by Harvard and is currently available online [...]

Last weekend I was attending the annual SALALM conference and heard about a lot of great projects relating to libraries and Latin American. The Cuban Rafter Phenomenon: A Unique Sea Exodus project is one of them. I heard about this project on a panel titled “Documenting in Times of Adversity, Survival and Hope.” María Rita [...]

Con ganas de celebrar el bicentenario de Colombia aquí recojo información sobre algunos eventos y colecciones que se han organizado en Colombia y virtualmente. ¡A celebrar se dijo! El proyecto Libro al Viento se ha asociado con la Biblioteca Luis Ángel Arango (BLAA) para traer varias biografías sobre los grandes de Colombia al público en [...]

At the beginning of the month I was in Montreal and got to visit La Grande Bibliothèque! This library is one of the city’s largest public libraries, and the collection is part of the Library and National Archives of Québec. I presume that since this region of Canada includes a vibrant separatist movement they feel [...]

RevisteroVirtual.com is a relatively new site that offers online access to a number of major Colombian magazines. The site, which launched in 2009, offers access to about 30 titles, including M2M, Semana, Revista Dini, Jet-Set, Dinero, Revista de Logística, El Malpensante y Mobiliari. To use the site you will have to create an account, but [...]

Late last month the Spanish Minister of Culture, Ángeles González-Sinde, announced the release of Hispana: colecciones digitales de archivos, bibliotecas y museos españoles. Hispana aggregates over one million digital items from 121 different Spanish institutions, including libraries, museums, archives, as well as private and public organizations. The site also includes a directory of ongoing digitization [...]

Yesterday the Berkman Center and eIFL announced the launch of Copyright for Librarians. This handy wiki aims at offering librarians a great reference tool for all things related to copyright and the law. The wiki is divided into nine different modules, each covering a specific aspect of copyright. The modules are design for use in [...]

While I was growing up in Colombia libraries were very scarce, the only library one ever heard mentioned was the Biblioteca Luis Ángel Arango (BLAA), which I finally got to visit. While the Biblioteca Luis Ángel Arango is owned by the Banco de la República de Colombia, it is very much a public library, and [...]