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Hispanic American Historical Review 83.2 (2003) 345-354



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Archival Research and the Program for Latin American Libraries and Archives

Dan Hazen


The Program for Latin American Libraries and Archives, based at Harvard University, has, since 1996, awarded more than one hundred small grants to preserve or enhance access to scarce research materials held within Latin America. This essay outlines the background to the program, explains its history and operations, describes some of the grants, and discusses both continuing issues and emerging possibilities.

The Context

The sources that support Latin Americanist scholarship cluster unevenly around the world. The imperial archives in Spain and Portugal are, of course, unique. The strongest library collections, too, are to be found in Europe and North America: local holdings in Latin America are in some cases more complete, but even the region's best libraries lack the mass of complementary books and journals, from adjacent countries as well as more distant locations, that allow comparison and provide context. But Latin Americanists also rely on the newspapers, pamphlets, photographs, film, music, video, and, most importantly, archival holdings, that can be found only within the region itself. Local libraries and archives are called upon to organize these sources, preserve them, and make them available for use.

Many of the region's repositories, however, have trouble fulfilling this charge. Tales of preventable damage and loss are depressingly common. While mismanagement, ignorance, or short-sightedness are sometimes to blame, aggressive climates, inadequate buildings, untrained staffs, and insufficient resources are more frequently the cause. Some collections are trapped in an inertia resulting from budgets too small to support relatively inexpensive, but nonetheless critical, improvements. A personal computer, for example, might allow some repositories to catalog holdings that are now inaccessible. Simple [End Page 345] facility upgrades might enhance user access or storage conditions. Acid-free materials or raw microfilm stock, typically hard-currency imports, could jump-start preservation. Consultancies or training sessions might pave the way for programmatic improvements. Projects to microfilm or digitize specific resources could enhance both preservation and access. In these and many other cases, modest interventions might make a huge difference by both saving endangered or neglected materials and allowing well-intentioned staffs to function more effectively.

Latin Americanist scholars and their home institutions have, over time, taken different approaches in working with the region's documentary record. Scholars, libraries, and (perhaps more problematically) collectors have from the outset sought to acquire documents and manuscripts for themselves. Even the most altruistic justifications—that removal would safeguard materials otherwise doomed to destruction or dispersal—have sat poorly with those sustaining the loss. A second and enduring stream of activity has focused on the removal of copies. Hand-prepared transcripts were (and are) simply carried away. But this model for disposition tended to persist even when more versatile technologies such as photography and microphotography came into vogue. Here again, scholars and libraries focused only on getting materials for themselves.1

Today's expectations are different. As early as the 1950s and 1960s, UNESCO dispatched a mobile camera to microfilm selected archival holdings, especially in Central America and the Caribbean, so as to preserve them for the community as a whole.2 Other broad initiatives have followed. The Latin American Microform Project (LAMP), for instance, was formed in the 1970s as a cooperative program of (by now) 42 North American libraries that together fund and carry out microfilming and digitizing projects.3 LAMP operates in full cooperation with host repositories: negative and positive film are provided as a matter of course, marketing rights as a rule remain with the [End Page 346] host institution, and local microfilm technicians are sought out whenever possible in order to strengthen each country's preservation capacity. Like any other library-based endeavor, however, LAMP is limited in what it can do. Universities fund their libraries to support local research and teaching, and these local priorities by and large define the limits of possibility. Many kinds of activity are therefore out of scope.

The Program for Latin American Libraries and...

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