MANIOC - digital library of Caribbean materials

MANIOC has recently been launched. This is a digital library focusing on the Caribbean, Amazon, and the Guianas which aims to preserve the cultural history of this region. It contains primary and secondary texts, audio and video files of conferences and interviews, and images which document the history, culture, politics, and economics of this area. There is also a catalog of scholarly journals, magazines, and newspapers about the region held in research libraries in Martinique, Guadeloupe, and French Guiana, and a link to the digital version of Etudes caribéennes

While the content is currently limited, I hope that it will grow. In the future, materials in MANIOC will also be accessible through Gallica. This is a resource to know and follow about for those of you working on the francophone Caribbean.

http://www.manioc.org/

Interesting articles on digital issues

The recent issues of the New York Review of Books and College & Research Libraries each contain articles about Google and its impact on the library and research world.

Stanford's University Librarian, Michael Keller, has penned a guest editorial in C&RL entitled "Mountain View: the Agreement among Google, Publishers, and Authors." In this piece, he gives an overview of last autumn's settlement between Google and the publishers, and discusses its implications for libraries and researchers.

Harvard's Director of the University Library, historian Robert Darnton, has a piece in the NYRB entitled "Google and the Future of Books" This article puts the Google Book Search into the historical context of the Republic of Letters, and offers some of the advantages and weaknesses of the copyright settlement and of Google Book Search for users, authors, and libraries.

Both articles are well worth a look - and both conclude that libraries remain viable and important institutions that provide much more than digital access to information.