Coherent Digital LLC today announced the launch of Latin American History and Culture, a comprehensive and deeply indexed database that provides unprecedented access to over half a million documents from across Latin America and the Latinx world. The resource brings centralized access and preserves archival and digital collections.
"The digital realm is home to a wealth of Latin American materials, but many are scattered across smaller websites that face the risk of disappearing due to neglect from lack of funding," explained Elizabeth Robey, project editor.
The beta version is expected to launch November 11 and will grow to include more than 650 newspapers from the nineteenth and twentieth centuries from over twenty Latin American countries; more than 400 magazines featuring art, politics, literature, and culture; rare ephemera; rare oral histories documenting everyday life, political movements, and immigration; and other content, much of which has been difficult to find or impermanent.
"Initiatives of this nature play a crucial role in preserving and safeguarding our collective memory for the benefit of future generations," said Maria Amor, Latin American Language & Cultures Librarian, San Diego State University.
Along with indexing large institutional archives, the project will preserve smaller, fragile websites, aiming to safeguard critical content for future generations of researchers. Coherent is investing in the digitization of 50,000 pages of rare content from a Latin American archive, to further enrich the database and support the preservation mission.
Free trials of Latin American History and Culture are available, as well as a work-in-progress bibliography, by contacting erobey@coherentdigital.net
About Coherent Digital
Coherent Digital LLC is a publisher that uses a combination of editorial and automated techniques to discover, curate, and enrich grey literature. The company has indexed and preserved more than 12 million items of quality content, much of which is unavailable elsewhere.