Libraries as digital scholarly publishers: Curating caribbean literature

Abstract

As librarians take on new, collaborative roles as publishers of digital scholarship alongside researchers and students, how may we leverage our expertise to make this work more impactful and sustainable? This poster explores this overarching question through the lens of a recent initiative, Caribbean Literary Heritage, and a partnership between the Digital Library of the Caribbean (dLOC) and University of East Anglia in the UK.

Beginning in summer 2020, librarians at the University of Florida, dLOC’s hub for technology and digital scholarship, consulted with UEA scholars Marta Fernández Campa and Alison Donnell on developing a multimedia publication and database that would highlight authors of the Caribbean and Caribbean diaspora over the past century. Building on what the project team had already produced—a project website, a rich collection of biographies, and hundreds of records tracing the locations of authors’ papers—dLOC librarians and graduate students stepped in to refine project design and to develop a long-term strategy for data curation. This project was especially appealing as an opportunity to consider how dLOC might build capacity for digital publishing in ways that complement and extend the value of partners’ digital collections.

The final project, to be launched in March 2022, includes an interpretive digital publication, Authors A-Z, as well as an interface to search, browse, and enhance information about authors’ papers. The poster will feature these resources, information about the methodology for creating them, as well as reflection on the necessary roles and responsibilities, expertise, and time investment for other libraries considering such partnerships.