Capacity Assessment of Latin American and Caribbean Partners - A Symposium About Open-Access, Technological Needs, and Institutional Sustainability - Report of Symposium and Recommendations

Oct 15, 2026

Uploaded by Jacob

A comprehensive report documents a virtual symposium convened in April 2020 to assess capacity among Latin American and Caribbean partners. It describes how organizers gathered diverse institutional voices to share strategies, identify common needs, and support open-access, technological readiness, and institutional sustainability. Recommendations are formulated by stakeholders to guide funders, libraries, archives, and related organizations when evaluating digital project grants and post-custodial archival work. The report aims to strengthen equitable cultural preservation and inclusive collection development.

LanguageEnglish

CategoryResearch & Report

FormatPDF

Pages20

Reading Time50 min

AccessFree to download

Goals of the Symposium

The Symposium

Survey of partners

Transition to virtual

Attendance and Social Media Data

Survey of attendants report

Recommendations

For Latin American and Caribbean Institutions

For U.S. based Libraries, Archives, and Cultural Heritage Institutions

For Funding Institutions

Conclusion

Bibliography

Acknowledgments

About the Authors

Capacity Assessment of Latin American and Caribbean Partners: A Symposium About Open-Access, Technological Needs, and Institutional Sustainability Report of Symposium and Recommendations A text prepared as a response to the symposium Hadassah St. Hubert, Jennifer Isasi, Nicté Fuller Medina and Margie Montañez February 2021 Published by: Council on Library and Information Resources 211 North Union Street Suite 100-PMB1027 Alexandria, VA 22314 [http://www.clir.org](http://www.clir.org) Copyright © 2021 by Council on Library and Information Resources. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. Contents Goals of the Symposium................................. 2 The Symposium......................................... 3 Survey of partners .................................... 6 Transition to virtual .................................... 6 Attendance and Social Media Data ..................... 8 Survey of attendants report ........................... 10 Recommendations ..................................... 11 For Latin American and Caribbean Institutions .......... 11 For U.S. based Libraries, Archives, and Cultural Heritage Institutions ...................... 12 For Funding Institutions............................... 14 Conclusion............................................. 15 Bibliography ........................................... 16 Acknowledgments ..................................... 16 About the Authors...................................... 17 Report of Symposium and Recommendations 1 Goals of the Symposium I n April 2020, the authors, CLIR Fellows in the second cohort of Data Curation for Latin American and Caribbean Studies, virtually convened Capacity Assessment of LatinAmerican and Caribbean Partners: A Symposium about Open-Access, Technological Needs, and Institutional Sustainability. Originally the symposium was meant to take place in person in Miami, Florida, at Florida International University’s Frost Art Museum and the Wolfsonian-FIU in Miami Beach. Because of Covid-19, the symposium took place in a virtual format hosted by the Digital Library of the Caribbean (dLOC). The symposium centered the voices of a group of institutions in Latin America and the Caribbean by providing a forum for these stakeholders to share strategies and identify common areas of need. In taking this approach we, as organizers, intended to step outside the neoliberal model of postcustodial archiving (Alpert-Abrams et al. 2019) and create an opportunity for digital archiving and cultural preservation to be driven by archives, libraries, and scholars in Latin America and the Caribbean. The recommendations in this report for working with archives and libraries in the region were formulated by these stakeholders based on the needs of and the particular challenges faced in their respective regions. Our goal was for these stakeholders to formulate a set of questions for funders, libraries, archives, and others based in the United States, Canada, or European nations to consider when evaluating grant proposals for digital projects, or when considering post-custodial archival work with institutions in Latin America and the Caribbean. Recordings from the virtual event were easily made widely available to libraries, archives, and funders, thus advancing knowledge and equitable practices for working with Latin American and Caribbean archives, libraries, and cultural heritage institutions. We sought to develop recommendations and equitable practices to enhance cultural engagement through collection development that fully acknowledges Latin American and Caribbean organizations as equal partners with a voice in decision making for projects and grant funding. It is our intent that this virtual symposium serve as a model to strengthen and diversify collections, as well as promote inclusion through the active preservation of hist

FAQs

What was the purpose of the symposium?

The symposium created a forum for stakeholders to share strategies and identify common needs related to open-access, technological requirements, and institutional sustainability.

Why did the symposium move to a virtual format?

Covid-19 prevented an in-person event, so it was held virtually through the Digital Library of the Caribbean (dLOC).

Who are the recommendations intended for?

The report’s recommendations address Latin American and Caribbean institutions, U.S.-based libraries, archives, and cultural heritage institutions, and funding institutions when evaluating digital and post-custodial archival work.

Oct 15, 2026

Uploaded by Jacob