September 26, 2008
Dear Faculty, Students, Staff and Friends,
It is my pleasure to welcome you to the Latin American Library! I want to share with you some highlights of the past year and announce some plans for the current academic year.
2007-2008 was a very successful year for the Latin American Library. We launched the Richard E. Greenleaf Library Fellowship program last fall with the visits of three scholars: Herman Byrd (History, University of Belize), Marco Calderón (Anthropology, Universidad de Michoacán) and Angel Danilo Orozco (Ethnomusicology, University of Havana). I hope many of you had the opportunity to meet with them and attend their talks. I am also pleased to report that the annual meeting of the Seminar on the Acquisition of Latin American Library Materials (SALALM) was a resounding success. The theme of the conference— Encounter, Engagement and Exchange: How Native Populations of the Americas Transformed the World — drew 277 registered attendees and 40 exhibitors at the May-30-June 3 meeting held at the Hotel Monteleone from May 30 to June 3. Tulane was well represented, with 18 faculty, students and librarians who presented papers, along with many colleagues from local and regional institutions. The conference itself, as well as the reception and the exhibit of original Indian painted manuscripts and other treasures, co-hosted with the Stone Center and Howard-Tilton Library, was a wonderful opportunity to showcase the library, our campus, and our city. The success of the event was due in no small measure to the hard work of the LAL staff, Carol Avila of the SALALM Secretariat, and the Tulane students who worked tirelessly before and during the conference.
Our rare and circulating collections have grown substantially in the past year. Among the highlights of recently acquired rare materials are second editions of two Lima imprints that complement our strong holdings of grammars and vocabularies of indigenous languages: Andrés Febres' Arte de la lengua general del reyno de Chile (1765), and Vocabulario de la lengua quichua general de los indios de el Perú (1754) by Diego de Torres Rubio. Other rare titles purchased recently and unique to Tulane are Teresa o, el terremoto (1829) by Peruvian writer Pablo de Olavide, and a book of rules for Augustinian nuns of Saint Monica published in Puebla in 1691. We also received from the Spanish Government a generous donation of 121 facsimile editions and other important publications relating to Latin America from the Spanish Government, presented by Ambassador Carlos Westendorp y Cabeza during his visit to New Orleans last May. We have prepared a list of new acquisitions that will be available at the open house; I will also send copies on request via email.
We have also enhanced our circulating collections through attendance at the Guadalajara and Buenos Aires book fairs as well as two highly successful buying trips. In July, David Dressing and I spent two very productive weeks in Yucatán and Chiapas scouring bookstores, museums, printing establishments, publishers and other dusty venues that sold books. We came back exhausted but well pleased that we had shipped back over 800 titles not previously held at Tulane. For his part, Sean Knowlton's first buying trip to Brazil was equally productive and invigorating for all. Two busy weeks in August, first at the Bienal do Livro in São Paulo and then visiting bookstores and publishers in Rio de Janeiro yielded some 350 recently published titles we didn't have. He also identified many more titles for future purchases. These book-buying trips are crucial for the enrichment of the collection and essential for the professional development of LAL staff. Last but not least, in the spring we purchased over 500 Cuban titles from the library of the Center for Cuban Studies in New York. We are grateful to the Zemurray Foundation, which funds these trips and purchases through the Doris Stone Endowment to the Latin American Library. There will be many more to come!
Many of you have had the pleasure of working with Sean, who came on board in July 2007. As coordinator of reference services, Sean has substantially improved access to LAL materials by overhauling our website and through classroom instruction. He has also greatly enhanced our online collection guides and other resources, which he regularly posts on the website. As most of you know, David was promoted to a permanent professional position as Curator of Manuscripts and Image Archives. This is truly wonderful news for LAL, faculty, students and our many visitors who will have the continued benefit of David's boundless enthusiasm for and knowledge of our special collections. Beginning this year, María Dolores Espinosa will take over the duties of Coordinator of Serials and Gifts, the position left vacant by Erika Anguiano who recently moved to another position outside the library. Verónica Sánchez will continue in her indispensable role as office, budget and stacks manager for LAL. A job announcement will be posted in the next few days for the position of Administrative and Bibliographic Assistant.
We have many things to look forward to in 2008-2009. We received 32 applications for this year's Greenleaf Fellowships from scholars in eight countries and a wide array of disciplines. We selected two fellows who will arrive in the spring: Brazilian historian Tania de Luca who will work on cultural propaganda by the government of Getúlio Vargas as evidenced in U.S. library collections, and José Antonio Hernández from the Universidad de Simón Bolívar in Venezuela with a project “Imaginarios en torno a Etiopía y la revolución haitiana en el “ libro de pinturas ” de José Antonio Aponte, La Habana (1812). More information on the Greenleaf library program and these scholars' research projects is on our website.
I am also pleased to announce that LAL recently signed an agreement with Gale-Cengage Group, a commercial microfilming company, to film three major collections, beginning this fall, with a plan to produce digital products in a second phase. Also, the SALALM Executive Board renewed the contract with Tulane to continue hosting the Secretariat for another three years, and I'm pleased that Carol Avila will stay on board managing that office.
Finally, we have an exciting schedule of events planned for this year. On December 5th we will host a program to celebrate the bicentennial of the first Spanish-language newspaper, El Misisipí (1808), in the United States, published in New Orleans. This event will feature a talk by Kirsten Silva Gruesz on New Orleans as a historic center of the Spanish-language print world in the 19 th century and well into the 20 th . On February 6 th we will present an exhibit on the theme of “Calendars and Creation,” in conjunction with the Sixth Annual Maya Symposium, and on April 1st we will host the opening reception and exhibit of the annual meeting of the Society of Ethnobotany, spearheaded by Bill Balée. We will also host work-in-progress presentations in the spring by the two Greenleaf scholars (dates to be announced).
On behalf of all of us at the Latin American Library, we wish you a productive and enjoyable year. We look forward to working with you!
Hortensia Calvo
Doris Stone Director
