Membership in LAMP is open to any institution or nonprofit organization maintaining a library and whose interests coincide with the project.

Member institutions are entitled to borrow, via Interlibrary Loan or by fax or electronic document delivery, all LAMP-funded material in accordance with CRL’s lending policies. These materials are available through the Center for Research Libraries’ online catalog [23] and are in OCLC.

Members receive discounted prices on purchasing microform material filmed by the project and within copyright limitations. Members also participate in the programmatic direction and governance of the project by proposing and voting on materials to acquire or film under the project.

Membership is assessed on an annual basis (beginning in July). Members in North America are assessed an annual membership fee of $800.
Members in Latin America pay 25% of the full membership fee, meaning at this time the membership fee for Latin American institutions is $200.  When borrowing physical materials, Latin American LAMP members must pay for the shipping of the materials in both directions.

See the LAMP prospectus [17] for more details.

To join LAMP, please complete and return the Membership Request Form.

For more information about membership or to inquire about joining LAMP, please contact Marlies Bauhofer [3].

The LAMP Executive Committee consists of both elected and ex-officio members.

LAMP’s Executive Committee consists of three institutional representatives selected from the full LAMP Committee, one ex-officio voting member from the Library of Congress [24], and the CRL coordinator as nonvoting member. The Executive Committee’s three institutional representatives serve for staggered three-year terms, and one new member is chosen at each annual meeting.

Current Committee

Sarah Buck Kachaluba (2024-2026),  LAMP Chair (2024-) University of California, San Diego
Marisol Ramos (2023-2025), University of California, Santa Barbara 
Paloma Celis Carbajal (2024-), New York Public Library
Jennifer Schaefer (2024-), University of Connecticut

Ex-officio Members

Marlies Bauhofer, Center for Research Libraries
Edmundo Flores, Library of Congress

The Latin American Microform Project: The First Decade

by Carl W. Deal
Originally published in Microform Review, v. 15, no. 1, Winter 1986, 22–27
[For a more recent article, see "Treinta Años de LAMP—A Brief Look Back [25]" (FOCUS 2005)]

Introduction

With a major interest in providing scholars in the United States and abroad with microform copies of materials not readily available, and with a commitment to the preservation of materials in danger of being lost or becoming inaccessible due to a variety of causes, the Latin American Microform Project (LAMP) has built an impressive catalog of completed projects and has in progress a number of ambitious and important new activities. The project was developed by a committee of the Seminar on the Acquisition of Latin American Library Materials (SALALM) in cooperation with the Center for Research Libraries (CRL) after several years of careful study and planning. (1) From a founding membership of sixteen libraries in 1975, it has increased in 1985 to twenty-nine member libraries.

LAMP is one of four foreign area cooperative microform projects administered through the Center for Research libraries that focus on Latin America, Africa, Southeast Asia (under two related programs), and South Asia. (2) The program that most influenced the goals and policies of LAMP is the Cooperative Africana Microform Project (CAMP), the oldest of the CRL area programs. Moderate annual membership dues for these five programs, which range from $200 to $1,000, has made it possible for most interested institutions to participate. The annual membership in LAMP of $500 has not changed since the project was inaugurated.

Governed by an Executive Committee that meets during the annual meetings of SALALM, it has been customary for LAMP representatives to consult not only with scholars from the member institutions but to confer with representatives of professional Latin American organizations like the Conference on Latin American History and the Scholarly Resources Committee of the Latin American Studies Association. The open meetings of the LAMP Executive Committee, which are conducted during the annual SALALM conferences, attract librarians from member and nonmember institutions alike, and they provide a very broad forum that is helpful in making project decisions. A staff member of the Center for Research Libraries acts as the permanent coordinator for the project.

Administration

LAMP is administered by an Executive Committee consisting of six institutional representatives selected from the full LAMP Committee which is comprised of representatives from each of the subscribing project members. In order to maintain close ties with acquisition, preservation, and other activities undertaken by the Library of Congress (LC), the LAMP representative of the LC serves as an ex-officio member of the Executive Committee unless serving as a full member. This liaison has been a key to the success of original microfilming that has been in progress since 1978 in Rio de Janeiro, where the Library of Congress Office has actively facilitated LAMP filming agreements with Brazilian institutional partners.

The permanent coordinator from CRL also serves as an ex-officio member of the Executive Committee, and is funded by LAMP to attend the annual meetings. Among the coordinator’s responsibilities are the circulation of ballots for voting on new projects that require decision by the full LAMP Committee, the distribution of agendas and minutes of annual meetings, and the administration of funds that support the activities undertaken by the project. All microforms are ordered, stored, and circulated by CRL in accordance with the LAMP prospectus and CRL policies. The other area projects affiliated with CRL are coordinated in much the same way.

A prospectus describes the objectives and goals of LAMP and provides for the responsibilities and privileges of membership. (3) Presently, CRL circulates LAMP materials only to project subscribers, and membership is open to any nonprofit institution, although membership in CRL is not required. The focus of LAMP is directed toward unique filming and preservation projects that CRL is neither staffed nor equipped to carry out for its broader membership. Scholars who require use of LAMP materials, but who do not belong to a member institution, may request copies of original LAMP microforms by paying only a percentage of the original cost of the negative and the cost of the positive, or they may use the materials in a LAMP members library.

Microfilming Activities

At its first meeting in 1975, the LAMP Executive Committee decided to begin establishing an inventory of holdings by concentrating its modest resources provided from sixteen institutional memberships on the purchase of microfilms on Mexico and Brazil, (4) the countries of greatest interest to the membership at that time. Sixty reels of positive film already available for the Mexico City Newspaper, Siglo XIX (1841–96) were LAMP’s first purchase. In keeping with this initial policy, several original Brazilian filming projects were also approved in the early years. Among those were filming of three important document collections published in Sao Paulo: “Atas da Camara da Cidade de Sao Paulo,” “Registro geral da Camara da Cidade de Sao Paulo,” and “Inventorios e testamentos; papeis que perteneceram ao lo cartorio de orfaos da capital.”

The preservation filming of journals, which has been a primary goal from the beginning, began as funds accumulated and the project was able, financially, to expand beyond its initial focus on Mexico and Brazil.  Thus, filming of two popular cultural and political journals, Siempre from Mexico and Ercilla from Chile also were undertaken by 1979, after copyright permission was secured from the publishers by scholars who were engaged in field research in those countries. While Siempre, which was filmed in this country by CRL and which LAMP updates on a continuing basis, is now available, Ercilla is being filmed for LAMP by the Biblioteca Nacional in Santiago, Chile and is only partially complete. This illustrates that filming in the United States usually provides faster results although, in the case of Siempre, assembling a complete collection for filming by CRL required the acquisition of missing issues by a LAMP member from the Hemeroteca Nacional (National Periodicals and Newspaper Library) in Mexico City. It has been LAMP’s constant experience that for journals it desires to film, it is often not possible to assemble complete files from holdings in North America, and contacts in the field by LAMP library representatives and Latin Americanist scholars have been essential to the completion of a number of microfilming projects undertaken in Chicago by CRL.

It became evident early to LAMP members that there are special advantages to a microform consortium. Not only does cooperative purchasing expand the amount of material available to the participants, it also provides a network for a more effective identification of titles for filming and for locating the most complete files available for filming. (5) This networking advantage is important since it is often required to combine holdings from various locations to complete a project. Because standard guides like the Library of Congress’ “Union List of Serials and Newspapers in Microform,” Rosa Mesa’s “Latin American Serial Documents,” and Steven M. Charno’s “Latin American Newspapers in United States Libraries” are often incomplete in the holdings they report, the location of important titles in a number of unreported repositories by LAMP participants has been extremely useful and necessary. Furthermore, a number of important journals and newspapers considered for filming by LAMP have been referred for preservation by the Library of Congress, including La Nacion, a leading daily Buenos Aires newspaper, and “Suplemento Literario,” an important Brazilian literary supplement to the official gazette of the state of Belo Horizonte, Brazil. This practice permits LAMP to use its modest resources for other original filming projects, and at the same time provides an opportunity to identify titles and make helpful recommendations on preservation to the Library of Congress.

At its second meeting in May 1976, the LAMP Executive Committee voted to use the greater part of its funds in the future for original filming and to purchase positives of existing negatives of materials only when they are not widely held by its members. This practice has been followed since then, including the filming of Siempre, Ercilla, and the three collections of Brazilian documents already mentioned, to which can be added the original filming of the Buckley collection of newspaper clippings on revolutionary Mexico, completed in 1985 at the Benson Latin American Collection at the University of Texas, Austin. Original microfilming of the Brazilian relatorios is a major project which has been in progress since negotiations began in 1976 in Rio de Janeiro, and filming of the West Coast Leader, a leading weekly newspaper from Lima completed by Yale University Library for CRL in 1980, the first year of Uno mas uno from Mexico City (completed by CRL in 1980), and Zig-Zag from Santiago (completed by CRL in 1982) are other original microfilming projects that distinguish LAMP’s holdings.

Foreign Microfilming Projects

The foreign projects undertaken in Brazil, Chile, and Mexico have required field negotiations by LAMP participants, and filming of journals or newspapers for which copyrights are still in effect have required written permission and/or collaboration of the publishers. Extensive projects like the Brazilian relatorios, which must be carried out in foreign repositories are always complicated. In the case of the Brazilian project, LAMP representatives personally negotiated the project with the directors of the Biblioteca Nacional and the Arquivo Nacional in Rio de Janeiro. The final agreement called for LAMP to provide funds for salaries of the microfilm technicians and materials (raw film, bulbs, etc.). The materials were sent by CRL to Brazil through the Library of Congress Office in Rio de Janeiro. The Brazilian partners secured local grants for providing students to collate and prepare the material for filming and to underwrite other project costs. Since the great majority of the relatorios filmed for this project have been indexed for statistics by Anne Hartness Graham, they are especially accessible to scholars. (6)

The relatorios of the Brazilian Imperial Period of 1822–89 are the official records of the government that appear as annual reports of the chief administrative officers, at that time known as presidents (governors), of the twenty Brazilian provinces. The original cooperative filming undertaken by LAMP with its Brazilian partners, which would expand later to include filming relatorios of the period of the First Republic after 1889, and also the annual reports of principal Brazilian government ministries of the twentieth century, is truly a significant and rapid advance for Brazilian research in a broad range of social, political, and economic topics. The bringing together of widely dispersed documents in a single Brazilian location for preservation microfilming under Library of Congress standards, with copies made available to scholars in both Brazil and North America, is a proud LAMP accomplishment.

Cooperation in this project was enthusiastic from the start as the Brazilian partners went beyond the original agreement to search out in regional archives additional relatorios or copies more acceptable for filming than those found in the Biblioteca Nacional or the Arquivo Nacional. The success of this project also led to further cooperation in filming the Almanak Laemmert (1884–89) and the “Relatorios ministeriais” (annual reports) of the ministries of the Treasury, War, Interior, Justice, Navy, and Foreign Relations from approximately 1825 to 1890. With the expansion of the project in 1982 to film these annual reports into the twentieth century, this collaboration promises to continue.

It is amply evident that reciprocity between LAMP and foreign repositories has been advantageous to all institutions involved. As a matter of policy, LAMP has provided a copy free of charge for the foreign repository or publisher. In the case of microfilming now underway for Ercilla in Chile and for the Brazilian relatorios in Rio de Janeiro, those projects have been facilitated by CRL’s provision of raw film through official U.S. government channels. If purchased in those countries, the price of the raw film would have made the costs of the Projects prohibitive not only for LAMP but for the cooperating foreign repositories as well. The costs to LAMP participants is especially attractive with the cost per reel in 1980 figured by CRL at $4.32 per roll. Five years later the per reel cost per member has decreased slightly in spite of the rising cost of raw film and labor.

Original filming with a foreign partner is not always possible to sustain over a long period of time, as has been the case with the filming of Uno mas uno, a leading Mexico City daily newspaper. LAMP negotiated with the publisher to provide a microfilm copy for the publisher and for LAMP, and the early successful stage of the project saw the completion of almost all issues (nos. 1–670) that appeared from November 1977 to September 1979. The project was interrupted and the newspaper announced the availability of a microfilm copy directly from the publisher. The availability of only 16mm microfilm copy, however, and the absence of readily accessible information from the publisher seem to have prevented the publisher from marketing the microfilm widely outside of Mexico. It is possible new negotiations could reopen the very successful initial relationship. Additional foreign based projects that have required time and site visits to implement have been the filming in Mexico City of two out-of-print newspapers, the Semana Mercantile and El Dictamen, the latter of which has been completed.

The reluctance of prospective foreign partners to cooperate in filming or in selling positive copies of existing microfilms to LAMP has been encountered on several occasions. This was particularly disappointing in the case of one institution that refused to sell a microfiche copy of important labor archives it had filmed. Even the intervention of a noted scholar in the field for LAMP was unsuccessful in arranging a sale or exchange for other LAMP materials. This reluctance is seen as a reaction of the foreign repository to claim of U.S. research colonialism which have been voiced frequently in Latin American academic circles over the years.

The most recent major original microfilm project completed was the filming of the premier Chilean magazine Zig-Zag (1905–67). LAMP contracted with the University of Utah Library for the filming of this journal, which is now complete in 218 reels. Combined with a selection of more than fifty Latin American newspapers and journals which appear in the LAMP catalog, this represents a major addition to the prominent body of periodical and journal literature available to the membership.

Microfilming in the Caribbean and Central America

In recent years LAMP’s interests have moved into the Caribbean and Central American regions. There have been serious but futile efforts to complete runs of the Nicaraguan opposition newspaper, La Prensa, from holdings in this country and from the publisher in Managua. Censorship by the government, causing periodic cessations of the newspaper difficult to track abroad, have made this a priority concern of LAMP. There is further fear that government action against the newspaper might result in destruction of back numbers not held anywhere else in North America. The project has offered to provide additional funding to allow the microfilming of available current issues as soon as possible through the Foreign Newspaper Microfilm Project, which is managed by CRL. Efforts have also been made to film this daily newspaper for the period prior to 1966, which is not held in microfilm by the Foreign Newspaper Microfilm Project.

Two very recent LAMP projects have focused on the Caribbean: one on Puerto Rico and one on Haiti. The Puerto Rican project is the first filming of an archive undertaken by LAMP. Completed in 1985, it preserves in microfiche the vertical file materials of the Library of the Centro de Estudios Puertorriquenios, now housed in the Centro at Hunter College of the City University of New York.

The second Caribbean undertaking, approved in 1984, is an ambitious project that selects from the Haitian periodicals in the Saint Louis de Gonzague Collection in Port-au-Prince, Haiti for filming. This remarkable collection of some 330 Haitian newspapers and journals is especially rich for the period of 1840 to the present. The project, which also has been provided with funds from the Ford Foundation, allows for the selection and filming of titles in this collection not held by other libraries in Haiti or elsewhere. Begun in 1984, it continues under the direction of Professor Leon-Francois Hoffman of Princeton University.

Institutions participating in LAMP represent varying and different foci of research and library needs. While LAMP’s revised 1985 Prospectus reiterates that it will conduct original filming whenever possible, it also continues to permit the purchase of positive copies of microfilms. The evaluation of the purchase of positive copies is carefully undertaken to avoid undue duplication; in fact, an evaluation of the purchase of literary periodicals from one commercial vendor led to the discovery that the materials being offered were not second generation positive copies made directly from the camera negative.** As a result, the original negatives were located for some titles in order to purchase the best possible copy.

New Sources for LAMP Funding

A new initiative is being undertaken by LAMP to secure outside funds to film Latin American serial documents. The project has supported the planning and development of a proposal by a librarian who is an expert in this field. In the planning stage the importance of Latin American serial documents to research in the area has been carefully analyzed and documented, and decisions identifying documents to be selected for filming are underway. If funded, this project can contribute to better management on a national scale of this important and large body of poorly accessible and rapidly deteriorating research material, and will have a very broad reaching and positive impact on libraries and scholarly research on Latin America.

The CRL Connection

From the day it was founded, the policies of LAMP have been closely related to those of the Center for Research Libraries, which now counts more than one hundred full institutional library members. Scholars should pay special note to the holdings of the Center described in its Handbook (7) as well as to those mentioned in a special list of Latin American holdings at CRL prepared in 1979. (8) Important items on microfilm that are not LAMP titles, but are available to the full CRL membership are a collection of the “Diario de los debates” of the Mexican Congress for 1857–75 and the “Diario de los debates” for both the Mexican Camara de Diputados and the Senado for the period of 1875–1914. In addition there are holdings of many Latin American newspapers, especially for the leading dailies of many countries from the period of 1954 to the present, which are included in the Foreign Newspaper Microfilm Project. Extensive holdings of official gazettes are also owned by CRL, although these are not currently maintained.

Most recently the Center was one of some ten subscribers along with several LAMP institutions to a cooperative project conducted by Clearwater Publishing Co., Inc. with the Public Records Office in London to film the British Foreign Office Records of Mexico for 1920–48. Before undertaking the contract, the publisher was able to identify within the CRL and LAMP membership sufficient interest to complete negotiations with the Public Records Office.

CRL can now stretch limited resources by referring to LAMP and other special area studies programs purchase requests for microforms of more specific interest. Thus, the purchase of the “Wesleyan Missionary Society Archives” for the West Indian Section, which was referred to and purchased by LAMP assured, availability of these archives to a wide group of Latin American scholars. Similar purchases by the Cooperative Africana Microform Project and the South Asia Microform Project made similar purchases of the Society's archives in their respective areas. Another archive that LAMP purchased because of limited interest within CRL was the Gibbs Archive, which includes the papers for the period of 1805–1903 of Anthony Gibbs and Sons, a London merchant and banking house that maintained major centers of activity in Chile, Peru, Mexico, Argentina, and other Latin American trading and banking centers.

There is no doubt that the interdependence of LAMP and CRL to serve scholarship through cooperation has led to the obvious successes of the project. The nature of that relationship has been formed by LAMP’s ability to identify and undertake very special projects in the United States, as well as in Latin America, which CRL could not hope to attempt nor have approved by the larger CRL membership. Likewise, without the administrative infrastructure and support that CRL has so effectively provided, the LAMP consortium of libraries could not have realized many of these projects. That close cooperative relationship is perhaps the most important dynamic that has made the first decade of LAMP activities so successful.

Conclusion

By any standard of evaluation, LAMP has proved to be a viable program. In its first decade, it has produced an inventory of materials that would have been impossible to assemble except through a cohesive and cooperative effort undertaken by its members with the Center for Research Libraries. During this time, the project has acquired some 1,200 reels of microfilms of more than ninety titles and projects of which 650 reels have resulted from the original filming of fifty-five titles and collections. Research materials on Brazil, formerly inaccessible in a single repository, are now available in both Brazil and North America and are having significant impact on new Brazilian scholarship. The preservation of original archives, newspapers, and journals just described are only some of the LAMP projects that will benefit present and future generations of Latin Americanist scholars. A complete list of LAMP titles in microform would be too long to provide here, but it may be requested from the Center for Research Libraries.

Benefits to participants, as the project increases its resources, will become massive as they continue to accumulate in the years ahead. An expansion of activities is already under study, which will investigate the exchange of microforms held by LAMP with institutions in Western Europe. This theme will be explored fully at the thirty-first annual meeting of SALALM to be held in Berlin on April 21-25, 1986, at the Ibero-Amerikanisches Institut.

While the potential number of members for LAMP is of course limited, some future growth can be expected. Growth, small or large, will broaden the interest of other institutions in the project and expand its ability to better serve the research needs of its members and of the Latin American research community. More information on LAMP, conditions of membership, etc., is available upon request from the LAMP Coordinator at the Center for Research Libraries, 6050 South Kenwood, Chicago, Illinois 60637.

Libraries from the following institutions are LAMP subscribers:

• University of California–Berkeley
• University of California–Davis
• University of California–Los Angeles
• University of California–Riverside
• University of California–San Diego
• University of California–Santa Barbara
• University of California–Santa Cruz
• University of Chicago Library
• Columbia University Libraries
• Cornell University
• Harvard University Library
• University of Houston
• University of Illinois–Urbana-Champaign
• University of Kansas
• Library of Congress
• University of Michigan
• University of Minnesota
• New York Public Library
• Ohio State University
• University of Pittsburgh
• Princeton University
• Rutgers University
• Stanford University
• University of Texas–Austin
• University of Toronto
• Tulane University
• University of Wisconsin
• Yale University Library

References

1. Carl W. Deal, “The Latin American Microform Project,” Foreign Acquisitions Newsletter 43 (Spring 1976): 7–12. This article describes the activities of the organizing committee. For additional information on organization and LAMP's original prospectus see also Carl W. Deal. “The Latin American Microform Project (LAMP) Is Inaugurated,” SALALM Newsletter 3:3 (March 1976): 11–16.
2. Ray Boylan and Cecelia L. Shores, “Collecting Retrospective Material From Developing Nations: A Cooperative Approach through Microforms,” Library Acquisitions: Practice and Theory 6 (1982): 211–19. The authors examine the functions, goals, and policies of the four projects.
3. “The Latin American Microform Project Prospectus” (Chicago: Center for Research Libraries, 1975). This document is periodically amended, but original goals and objectives described therein virtually have remained unchanged.
4. Latin American Microform Project. Minutes of the Meeting of the Latin American Microform Project Committee, Meeting of December 15, 1975. While the minutes of LAMP are a source for this article, hereafter they are not attributed specific citations.
5. Boylan and Shores, op. cit. The authors note that files for filming are assembled at CRL, but the actual filming is done by the Photoduplication Department of the University of Chicago.
6. Ann Hartness Graham, “Subject Guide to Statistics in the Presidential Reports of the Brazilian Provinces, 1830–1889.” (Guides and Bibliographies Series: 9) (Austin: Institute of Latin American Studies, University of Texas, 1977.) The LAMP project includes an additional twenty-five percent of material not indexed in this work.
7. CRL Handbook. (Chicago: Center for Research Libraries, 1981). Those interested in the full range of CRL’s purchasing policies should review this handbook and its latest Supplement published in 1984.
8. Ray Boylan, comp. “Latin American and Caribbean Research Materials Available from the Center for Research Libraries,” Rev. ed. (Chicago: Center for Research Libraries, 1979).
   • Carl W. Deal is the Director of Library Collections in the University Library of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in Urbana, IL
   • Editor’s Note: Microforms from commercial vendors are usually third-generation positive copies made from second-generation negative printing masters.

Reprinted by permission from K. G. Saur, Ortlerstr. 8, D-81373 Munich, Germany.

1. Purpose
   The purpose of the Latin American Materials Project (LAMP) is to acquire, preserve, and maintain for its subscribers microform collections of unique, scarce, rare, and bulky or  voluminous research materials pertaining to Latin America. LAMP emphasizes original filming, though it may also purchase existing microfilm, and make scholarly materials more accessible digitally. LAMP conducts its activities on the basis of annual subscription fees, plus outside resources, including grant funds, as appropriate.
2. Organization
   The LAMP Committee
   The LAMP Committee consists of one representative from each subscribing institution wishing such representation, plus the CRL Coordinator.
   Each member institution is responsible for naming its representative to the LAMP Committee and communicating the name of that individual to the Chairperson of the LAMP Executive Board and to the CRL Coordinator.
   The LAMP Committee meets annually in conjunction with the annual meeting of the Seminar on the Acquisition of Latin American Library Materials.
   The official business of the LAMP Committee may be conducted by mail ballot or in person at the annual meeting.  Each member institution is entitled to one vote on each question, which may take place by electronic ballot. Voting shall be decided by a simple majority of all ballots returned by the stated deadline.
   
   The functions of the LAMP Committee are:
   • To establish annual and retrospective subscription fees for domestic and international members. (See Appendix I for the current annual subscription.)
   • To determine LAMP’s acquisitions policy
   • To set the expense level at which a proposed acquisition, filming, or digital project will require approval by the full LAMP Committee rather than its Executive Committee (See Appendix II for the current level.)
   • To select the three institutional representatives who comprise the Executive Committee
   • To work with the Center for Research Libraries in developing mutually acceptable policies for operations and access. Proposed changes that affect this Prospectus must be ratified through the procedure established in Section 7.
   The Executive Committee
   LAMP’s Executive Committee consists of three institutional representatives selected from the full LAMP Committee, the CRL coordinator and the Head of the Library of Congress Hispanic Division or a proxy as ex-officio members. The Executive Committee’s three institutional representatives serve for staggered three-year terms, and one new member is chosen at each annual meeting. Selection is by self- or third-party nomination, followed by an open vote. The candidate who receives the most votes is elected. Vacated positions are filled until the following annual meeting by the Chairperson of the Executive Committee. Longer-term vacancies are filled, to the normal expiration of the original incumbent’s term, through the nomination and balloting process just described. The Executive Committee is authorized to meet in conjunction with such non-SALALM events as ALA’s Midwinter Meeting or the International Congress of the Latin American Studies Association.
   
   The duties of the Executive Committee are:
   • To determine specific acquisitions in accordance with the policies of LAMP as determined by the full LAMP Committee
   • To make policy recommendations to the full LAMP Committee
   • To carry on LAMP’s business between meetings of the full LAMP Committee
   • To circulate minutes of both the Executive Committee meetings and the annual meeting of the full LAMP Committee as soon as possible after each meeting
   • To maintain close liaison with such scholarly associations as the Conference on Latin American History, the Latin American Studies Association, and the Seminar on the Acquisition of Latin American Library Materials; to similarly maintain contact with the other Area Studies projects and the Global Resources Network Projects associated with the Center for Research Libraries; and to remain aware of current trends in preservation and cooperative collection development as articulated through such agencies as the Council on Library and Information Resources. These contacts will enhance LAMP’s ability to assess priorities, to employ appropriate technologies in conducting its projects, and to develop strategies for the future.
   The Chairperson
   The Executive Committee chooses a Chairperson from its membership. The same person may serve as Chairperson for more than one year.
   
   The duties of the Chairperson are:
   • To ensure that the Executive Committee fulfills its charges in an expeditious manner
   • To work with the Center for Research Libraries in identifying and resolving issues of policy, procedure, and operations
   • To prepare an agenda for the full LAMP Committee
   • To preside over the annual meeting of the full LAMP Committee
   • To serve as LAMP’s representative to meetings of the CRL-based Area Studies Council
   • To appoint members of the full LAMP Committee, as needed, to fill temporary vacancies on the Executive Committee
   The Center for Research Libraries
   • LAMP is administered by the Center for Research Libraries, which bills for and receives all subscription fees. The Center utilizes these fees and other LAMP income in order to acquire, catalog, house, and circulate materials, and to carry out all other activities related to LAMP and its administration.
   • An official LAMP Coordinator from the Center for Research Libraries, appointed by the President of the Center, serves as an ex-officio member of the LAMP Committee and as a nonvoting ex-officio member of the Executive Committee. Meeting attendance by the CRL Coordinator will, as required, be funded by LAMP.
3. Membership
   Any nonprofit institution may request to become a LAMP subscriber, subject to approval by LAMP’s Executive Committee. CRL membership is not a requisite for participating in LAMP. Subscribers may withdraw from LAMP by providing written notice to the CRL Coordinator by March 15 of the year preceding withdrawal.
   
   Project subscribers have the following rights and obligations
   • Any current subscriber may borrow all LAMP owned material, provided membership fees are paid.
   • Any former subscriber shall retain the right to borrow materials acquired both during its subscription period and during the two years following termination of that subscription.
   • Any subscriber may purchase at cost from LAMP, for its own use, positive microfilm prints for negatives controlled by LAMP. Such negatives must have been acquired during the subscriber’s years of dues-paying participation, plus the two years immediately following its subscription cancellation. Active subscribers may also borrow positive prints purchased by the project, and will regularly receive list of LAMP holdings.
   • A group of subscribers may purchase positive prints for negatives controlled by LAMP for the years during which their subscriptions have been paid. These prints shall not be loaned to institutions not subscribing to LAMP.
   • Any borrowing institution will reimburse LAMP for any damage or loss of film that occurs while the film is in its custody. Loan provisions are those generally in force at the Center for Research Libraries.
   • International members may borrow LAMP materials but they are required to pay all shipping charges to receive the materials from CRL and return the materials to CRL.
4. Subscription Fees
   LAMP subscribers in the United States and Canada pay an annual subscription fee that is due and payable in full on July 1 of the subscription year. The annual fee is set out in Appendix I of this Prospectus.  LAMP subscribers in Latin America and the Caribbean pay an annual subscription fee that is 25% of the fee established for the United States and Canada.  LAMP’s subscription and fiscal year run from July 1 to June 30 of the following year.

    

5. Access to Materials by Nonmembers
   Any LAMP holdings acquired through grant-funded projects may be borrowed by all members of the Center for Research Libraries, subject to the limitations established in Section 3, above. Nonmembers of the Center for Research Libraries who are not LAMP subscribers will have access to these materials through CRL’s nonmember interlibrary loan service and through on-site use in the Center’s reading room.
   
   Positive microforms acquired by LAMP will not be lent to nonsubscribers, except in special cases approved by the Executive Committee. Subscribers may not borrow LAMP holdings on behalf of non-subscribing libraries. A subscriber may borrow LAMP holdings for use in the library by a visiting scholar from a non-subscribing institution. The full LAMP Committee may approve “special case” exemptions to this Access Policy by mail ballot or majority vote during the annual meeting. (See Appendix III for current “special cases.”)
   
   Non-subscribing institutions may purchase positive microform copies of LAMP holdings from any negative acquired and controlled by LAMP for the cost of the positive print plus one-third of the negative cost.
    
6. Ownership and Project Termination
   LAMP’s assets shall be the property of the Center for Research Libraries. Subscribers to LAMP will always have the right to purchase from the Center any positive print from any negative acquired and controlled by LAMP, for the cost of the positive print.
   
   Should LAMP be terminated, subscribers will retain their original rights of access to all microforms acquired during LAMP’s existence. Any cash balance shall be distributed among all members active as of the termination date.
    
7. Amendment of Prospectus
   Amendments to this Prospectus may be proposed by any member of the LAMP Committee. For consideration during the current year, proposed amendments must be received by the Chairperson of the Executive Committee and the CRL Coordinator at least 90 days prior to the annual meeting.
   
   Within 60 days of the annual meeting, all subscribers will receive copies of the proposed amendment(s).
   
   Within 60 days of discussion at the annual meeting, the amendment(s) will be circulated to all subscribers of mail ballot. Amendments will be enacted with a ¾ majority among the ballots actually returned.

Appendices
The Appendices detail LAMP policies currently in effect per procedures detailed in the Prospectus. The Appendices do not form a part of the Prospectus, per se.

Appendix I. The current annual LAMP subscription fee for subscribers in the United States and Canada is $800.  The annual fee for members in Latin America and the Caribbean is $200.

Appendix II. The Executive Committee is currently authorized to spend up to one year’s subscription income during any LAMP fiscal year.

Appendix III. The following “special case” exception to LAMP’s access policy was approved by the full LAMP Committee at its 1992 annual meeting:

“All CRL members will be allowed five filled requests totaling no more than 20 reels of microfilm or fifty sheets of microfiche, for materials acquired with LAMP funds. When an institution that does not subscribe to LAMP reaches this cut-off point, CRL will send it a letter that describes how LAMP serves scholarship and that urges it to consider participation. The institution will also be advised to contact the LAMP Executive Committee if it has a temporary research need that would justify a limited exemption from these restrictions. The subsequent decision of the Executive Committee will be final.”

This page highlights important elements of the LAMP collection.  It does not represent the complete holdings of LAMP, but is rather a representative description of some noteworthy items in the collection.  For access to all of LAMP's holdings, please search the CRL Catalog [23].

Abdias Nascimento Collection

LAMP's microfilm collection contains a portion of the archival material about Abdias Nascimento held at the Instituto de Pesquisas e Estudos Afro-Brasileiros (IPEAFRO) in Rio de Janiero, Brazil.  IPEAFRO has organized and microfilmed the collection, and has made some of it available on its website.  The collection held by LAMP includes sections on the Teatro Experimental do Negro, and Nascimento's political activity and correspondence.
Abdias Nascimento (1914-2011) was an Afro-Brazilian artist, scholar, and politician.  He founded the Black Experimental Theater in 1944 and later became the first Afro-Brazilian elected to the Senate in Brazil.
Catalog Record [30]  Guide [31]
Website [32]

Aramayo-Francke Archives

LAMP has filmed a partial set of an extremely valuable collection of documents from the Aramayo-Francke Company, one of the principal mining companies of the nineteenth century and one of the "Big Three" in the twentieth century tin mining boom.  The archives, located in Tupiza, Bolivia, span the period 1869 to 1934 and consist of 354,000 papers of all types.  The archives contain a set of 256 "Copiadores de Cartas," copies of letters sent as well as binders of letters received. The "Copiadores" contain not just business correspondence, but also the private correspondence of Felix Avelino Aramayo, revealing many personal facets of the lives of mining elites and of social history.
Catalog Record [33]  Guide [34]

Archivo Miguens

The Archivo Miguens, located at the Universidad de San Andres in Argentina, contains information on public opinion research made by the initiative directed by Dr. Jose Enrique Miguens between 1958 and 1973.  It consists of 31 folders of approximately 792 typed pages each.  The information covers a wide spectrum of themes of interest to social scientists and historians:  attitudes with respect to privatization, public perceptions of international conflicts that affected Argentina (especially border disputes), images of political parties, Armed Forces and other social institutions, etc.
Most of the samples are statistically representative and of national coverage, although also there are studies between leaders of opinion and sectorial representatives.  A significant number of the indicators were included in more than one measurement, with which the file offers the possibility of studying the long-term evolution of different attitudes, perceptions and opinions in Argentina.
Catalog Record [35]  Guide [36]

Brasil - Nunca Mais Project

LAMP holds 538 reels of microfilm containing court documents (processos) from Brazil's Military Supreme Court.  These proceedings document the cases of over 7,000 persons arrested, charged, convicted, and/or executed by the Court between 1964 and 1979.  The official records, which were copied in secret, document human rights violations by the military government in Brazil during this period.
Catalog Record [37]  Guide [38]
Website [39]

Brazilian Government Document Digitization Project

LAMP digitized executive branch serial documents issued by Brazil's national government between 1821 and 1993, and by its provincial governments from the earliest available to the end of the Empire in 1889.
Project Page [40]

Centro de Documentacion e Investigacion de la Cultura Izquierdas (CeDInCI)

LAMP approved funding to this archive to microfilm periodicals, books, pamphlets, flyers, and other materials published by Argentina's many social organizations and political groups on national and international political movements (including anti-fascism, Communism, Socialism, and other leftist movements).
Publicaciones periodicas y seriadas socialistas, 1899-1951 
Catalog Record [41]    Guide [42]
Publicaciones politicas y culturales Argentinas, c. 1900-1950
Catalog Record [43]  Guide [44]
Publicaciones politicas y culturales Argentinas, c. 1917-1956
Catalog Record [45]   Guide [46]
Publicaciones politicas y culturales Argentinas, 1923-1986 
Catalog Record [47]   Guide [48]

Colección Lafragua

This filming project involved the Biblioteca Nacional de México, LAMP, and the Fideicomiso para la cultura Mexico/USA.  The Colección Lafragua contains books, pamphlets, manuscripts, maps, articles, and other documents covering 19th century Mexican intellectual history, originally assembled by José María Lafragua, first director of the Biblioteca Nacional de México.  This 236 reel set has preserved the majority of the original collection.  Separate bibliographies to the collection serve as a guide to the microfilm.  Access material through collection accession number, for example LAF 125.
Catalog Record [49] 
Guide for materials 1800-1810 [50] 
Guide for materials 1811-1821 [51] 
Guide for materials 1821-1853 [52] 
Guide for materials 1854-1875 [53]

Encuesta de Folklore de 1921

LAMP has acquired a set of 109 reels of microfilm containing approximately 88,000 manuscript pages of songs, legends, nursery rhymes, and traditional stories from rural Argentina. The materials were compiled by Argentine elementary school teachers in 1921, from elderly residents of many rural areas in Argentina.
The first three reels of the collection contain a catalog of the collection by Ricardo Rojas.  The collection was acquired from Argentina’s Centro de Estudios Hist́oricos e Informacíon Parque de Espãna.
Catalog Record [54]  Guide [55]

The Gibbs Archive:  the papers of Antony Gibbs & Sons

LAMP acquired the microfilm set of the papers of Antony Gibbs & Sons, 1744-1953.  The 295 reel set consists of the Gibbs family papers, the business archives of Antony Gibbs & Sons, and the records of associated companies.  The Gibbs Archive chronicles the story of the descendants of Antony and Dorothea Gibbs, and records the evolution of the family business, Antony Gibbs & Sons Ltd.  The family papers offer insight into the background and life of an upwardly mobile British family whose success is crowned by a peerage.  The business papers are not only a mine of information about the business community in Britain, Spain, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, and Rhodesia, but also provide information about Latin America, because the company actively traded in Peru, Chile, Bolivia, and Brazil.
Catalog Record [56]    Guide [57]

Haitian Periodicals in the Saint Louis de Gonzague Collection

In 1984 LAMP approved an ambitious project to microfilm Haitian periodicals in the Saint Louis de Gonzague Collection in Port-au-Prince, Haiti.  This remarkable colleciton of some 330 Haitian newspapers and journals is especially rich for the period of 1840 to the present.  The project, which received funds from the Ford Foundation, allowed for the selection and filming of titles in this collection which are not held by other libraries in Haiti or elsewhere.  It was successfully completed under the direction of Professor Leon-Francois Hoffman of Princeton University.
Guide [58]

Hunter College.  Centro de Estudios Puertorriqueños.  Vertical Files

The Centro de Estudios Puertorriqueños was founded by the City University of New York in 1973.  Its primary goal is to promote an integral analysis of Puerto Rican society, establishing links between the island situation and its extensions in the 'barrios' of the United States.
The vertical files of the collection house a wide range of materials covering both Puerto Rico and Puerto Ricans in the U.S.  Central to the file is the collection concerned with Puerto Rican politics and government.  The file contains thousands of newspaper clippings, numerous pamphlets (many of them rare), flyers, unpublished papers and reports.  Periodical publications of various political parties and groups have been included because of their historical value and scarcity.  In the collection, some of the more unique items relate to the Partido Socialista (1950-1952), Partido Comunista (1934- ), Partido Nacionalista de Puerto Rico (1922- ), Partido Independentista Puertorriqueño (1946- ), Partido Socialista Puertorriqueño (1946- ), and other political groups.
Catalog Record [59]  Guide [60]

Latin American Serials from the Benson Collection

LAMP and the University of Texas at Austin duplicated 600 serials from Latin America. These rare materials from the Benson Latin American Collection include government publications and other serials published from 1821-1982.

The rare and endangered titles were originally captured in microfilm in the early 1980s through a U.S. Department of Education Title II-C grant. The Benson Library created archival-quality master negatives, but were unable make these accessible until print masters and catalog records could be created. The LAMP effort supported the duplication of film, which included a copy to be held at the Center for Research Libraries, and Texas supported the cataloging of the resources. This eight-year effort has added approximately 900 reels of microfilm to LAMP’s collection.
Guide [61]

Libros de Acuerdo del Cabildo Secular de Potosi, 1562-1817

LAMP funded the cataloging of the Libros de Acuerdo del Cabildo Secular de Potosi, 1562-1817 collection, which is held at the Archivo y Biblioteca Nacionales de Bolivia.
Volume 1 [62]
Volume 2 [63]
Volume 3 [64]
Volume 4 [65]
Volume 5 [66]

Memorias
Ministerial Reports of Latin America

In 1986, LAMP and the Library of Congress received a grant award from the National Endowment for the Humanities to increase researchers' access to primary source materials containing statistical and administrative data from the ministries of Latin America.  The project preserved ministerial reports of 19 countries from pre-1959 reporting periods.
Since the end of the grant period, LAMP and the Library of Congress have continued to collaborate on the preservation of these ministerial reports (Memorias).  The attached lists represent microfilm created as part of the project and follow-on activities of the Library of Congress.  It does not represent all of LAMP's holdings of government documents.  For more documents relating to Brazil in digital format, see the Brazilian Government Documents [40]
Guides to the collection are organized by country:
Argentina [67]  Bolivia [68]  Brazil [69]  Chile [70]  Colombia [71]  Costa Rica [72] 
Cuba [73]  Dominican Republic [74]  Ecuador [75]   El Salvador [76]  Guatemala [77] 
Honduras [78]  Mexico [79]  Nicaragua [80]  Panama [81]  Paraguay [82]  Peru [83] 
Uruguay [84]  Venezuela [85]

El Obrero Municipal

LAMP microfilmed this newspaper, which was published by the Unión Obreros Municipales (the workers' union for the public employees of Buenos Aires City Government).  The union was led by activists from the Socialist Party from 1916 to 1943.  Successive years traded control between Peronist party and the Socialistas.  The paper was issued monthly (with bimonthly supplements starting in 1944).  Filming for this project was coordinated by CEHIPE in Argentina and includes the newspaper's subsequent title changes.
El Obrero Municipal 1917-1947  Catalog Record [86]
Unión Obreros Municipales 1947-1948  Catalog Record [87] 
Unión Obreros y Empleados Municipales 1951-1967  Catalog Record [88]

PIDEE

LAMP worked with the Fundación para la Protección de la Infancia Dañada por los Estados de Emergencia (PIDEE) in Santiago, Chile to organize and preserve their case files.  PIDEE was founded during the Pinochet dictatorship in order to address the needs of children affected by repression, including 'disappeared' parents, disrupted families, and political prisoners.
In order to borrow material from this collection, the patron's Interlibrary Loan request must be accompanied by a signed declaration form [89].
Catalog Record [90]   Reel Guide [91]

Princeton Theological Seminary Journals

LAMP supported the microfilming of 134 Latin American religion periodicals held at the Princeton Theological Seminary.  The Theological Seminary began research-level collecting of Latin American materials in religion and theology with intensity in the 1970s.  The focus is on Protestant and Catholic religious literature, and the emphasis is on post Vatican II material and the emergence of liberation theology.  Items are cataloged individually.
Guide [92]

William F. Buckley, Sr. papers, 1880-1948

This set originates from the archival collection at the University of Texas at Austin.  Buckley lived in Mexico from 1908 until 1921, when he was expelled for opposition to the Alvaro Obregon government.  He was an advisor to U.S. and European oil companies, operated a law firm, and engaged in real estate and leasing of oil lands.  He was also founder and president of the American Association of Mexico, through which he worked to remove restrictions on U.S. oil and landed interests in Mexico imposed by the Mexican Constitution of 1917.
Catalog Record [93]  Guide [94]

Comprehensive printed guides to LAMP’s collections have been superceded by CRL’s online catalog [23].

This page features partial lists and descriptions of LAMP’s collections that do not lend themselves to descriptions found in the Guides to Collections [26]. [26]

The February 2012 Holdings List [26], the most comprehensive source of LAMP’s collection, contains the definitive bibliographic listing of all materials LAMP has collected since its inception in 1975. The list displays material organized by country, alphabetized by author/title, and has separately organized sections for all government ministerial reports (Memorias) and special collections.

Recent Receipts and Cataloged Items

These lists of recently received and cataloged LAMP items are provided to members at the meetings of LAMP, which are held once a year.

• May 2011 [95]
• June 2012 [96]
• July 2018 [97]
• June 2020 [98]
• June 2021 [99]

Benson Latin American Collection of South American Serials on Microfilm

LAMP and the University of Texas at Austin have recently completed the duplication of 600 serials from across Latin America. These rare materials from the Nettie Lee Benson Latin American Collection include government publications and other serials published primarily from 1821 to 1982.

Sample titles include:
El Bromista [100] (Montevideo, Uruguay)  April 1884-January 1886
El Gŕafico [101] (Bogota, Colombia) July 1910-May 1941
La Revista Agricola:  Organo oficial de la Direccion de Agricultura [102] (Mexico City, Mexico) 1917-1922
Revista de la Universidad Nacional de Córdoba [103] (Córdoba, Argentina) 1914-1978, and
Revista do Instituto Archeológico e Geográphico Pernambucano [104] (Recife, Brazil) 1863-1919

A finding aid listing the individual titles is available in the Guide to LAMP Collections [26].

Bolivian Newspapers from the University of Connecticut

LAMP will microfilm Connecticut's holdings of seven rarely-held Bolivian newspapers from the period 1877-1908.   These papers represent a cross-section of opinion from Bolivia during a period of political instability and conflict.  The titles include Imparcial [105] (published in La Paz) 1888-1897, Industria [106] (published in Sucre) 1881-1908, and Estrella de Tarija [107] (published in Tarija) 1877-1892.

Brasil Nunca Mais

LAMP is supporting the efforts of the Ministério Público Federal in Brazil to digitize nearly one million pages of the collection Brasil: Nunca Mais, which contains court documents (processos) from Brazil’s Military Supreme Court. These proceedings document the cases of over 7,000 persons arrested, convicted, and/or executed by the Court between 1964 and 1979. Copied in secrecy, the official records document human rights violations by the military government in Brazil during this period.
LAMP received the collection in 1987 from the Brasil: Nunca Mais project director Rev. Jaime Wright, who was seeking a location to deposit the microfilm copy of the records for safekeeping and use. CRL stored the 543-reel set [108], created a reel guide to accompany the 12-volume index [109] to the case files, and made the collection accessible to member institutions.
Copies of the film are now being sent to Brazil for digitization, after which the collection will be openly accessible via a public database.

CESPI Documents on Brazilian/Latin American Children

The Center for Research on Childhood (CESPI) at the Universidade Santa Úrsula (Rio de Janeiro) possesses an archival collection about Brazilian children and youth, including such subjects as the history of child welfare, legislation on children, and guides to research on children throughout Latin America. LAMP has preserved the materials of Dr. Moncorvo Filho, whose work was dedicated primarily to the social aspects of the effects of poverty on Brazilian youth.
These titles are available on microfilm [110] and electronically [111].

Diario de Pernambuco

LAMP will fund digitization of some of the University of Florida's microfilm holdings of Diario de Pernambuco [112].  This newspaper is the oldest in circulation in Latin America and carried news about commerce, social affairs, and politics.  LAMP is providing funding for Florida to begin digitizing this title, which Florida holds for 1825-1923.

La Protesta

LAMP intends to film this Argentine radical periodical, held in part by UCLA.  IDC Publishers [113] has filmed a significant run of this title (1903–41) in its Latin American Anarchist and Labour Periodicals (c. 1880 [114]– [115]1940) [114] collection, which contains some gaps. LAMP will compare the IDC inventory with other collections to ascertain whether LAMP is able to fill in the gaps.

Senator Abdias Nascimento Archive

Abdias Nascimento was the first Afro-Brazilian senator in Brazil and an activist for Afro-Brazilian rights since the early 1930s. Nascimento [116]’ [117]s archive [116] chronicles the evolution of 20th-century Afro-Brazilian consciousness. It includes personal papers, news clippings, manuscripts, correspondence, theses and dissertations, mimeographed materials from various African world events, and other ephemera (including drama works by such groups as the Convicts’ Theater, which Nascimento founded). LAMP is contributing funds to organize and preserve this archive. (See reel guide [118] and the IPEAFRO Web site [119].)

Variedades

This illustrated weekly was the foremost chronicle of the cultural, political, and social development for Peru for the first third of the 20th century. Edited by Clementa Palma, Variedades [120] is notable for its satirical character, literary and social content, and political commentary.  Palma conceived of the magazine as a critical voice in Peruvian affairs, independent of political postures and partisan polemics, using humor to address political controversies. LAMP has received a copy of the virtually complete collection of this serial acquired by UCLA, from 1908 to 1932.

Proposals should be submitted using the Proposal Template [121].  The proposals will then be made available in the globalCollections platform [122].

If you would like to propose a digitization project, please write a proposal covering the questions in the LAMP Digitization Project Principles [123]

LAMP funding can support direct costs for projects (including digitization costs, personnel salary and benefits, and other reasonable direct costs). However, LAMP’s policies do not allow for the inclusion of indirect/overhead costs. CRL and its constituent programs provide support for projects on a cost-reimbursable basis, and should not be construed as “grants.”

You may open the form, add information about your proposed project in the appropriate fields, and then e-mail the completed proposal to Marlies Bauhofer [124].  If you have any questions about the form or about project proposal ideas, please contact Marlies Bauhofer [125].

The Latin American Materials Project (LAMP) at the Center for Research Libraries received funds in 1994 from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation to explore aspects of digitization from microfilm. Working in cooperation with the Biblioteca Nacional do Rio de Janeiro, LAMP selected its collection of Brazilian government documents because of their scarcity, importance, and volume. Completed in December 2000, the project digitized more than 673,000 images of government publications, freely available over the web.

Read more in the detailed final report of the project [128].

Technical Information

The Brazilian documents were scanned from microfilm copies of the originals, which were filmed by the Biblioteca Nacional do Rio de Janeiro. The images were originally stored as GIF and TIFF images in the Center for Research Libraries’ Electronic Document Storage and Distribution Facility. TIFF images were produced at 300 dots per inch ("dpi") and GIF derivatives for presentation on the web were produced at a resolution of 100 dpi.

In 2001 CRL transferred the project files originally stored on a magnetic-optical storage medium ("jukebox") array to large-capacity hard disks. In 2009 CRL migrated the project files into its Drupal-based system.

At the time of project implementation, Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software had yet to fully mature to produce reliable results for Portuguese-language material presented in various typefaces and font sizes (density and optical resolution of the microfilm “originals” also precluded meaningful OCR at the time).The project team utilized manual page-level indexing to provide navigational assistance within each report. Selected tables of contents were keyed later in the project, with hyperlinks added to the appropriate page of each table. 

In 2018 CRL reprocessed the project file images (TIFFs) using state-of-the-art OCR software, generating full-text results for each item and page, and producing coordinated OCR output to highlight search terms found within the documents. Files were migrated to CRL's newest generation Digital Delivery System [129] (DDS), presenting the contents in a IIIF-compliant image management system, with full text search and download capabilities.

Image Quality and Selection

The images in this database are uneven in quality. Most images are legible, but some are not. The quality of images can vary considerably from one page to the next. Poor image quality is due to the poor condition of the paper copy when it was filmed. The damaged paper copy resulted in degenerated microfilm images, which then migrated to the electronic medium. In a few isolated cases, such as the entire Piaui Provincial Presidential Reports, the film images were not scannable at the time of the project (Piaui files scanned separately in 2009 and added to CRL's DDS). Documents not available on film have been considered unavailable and have been omitted from these files. Blank pages included in the original page sequences, which were also copied during microfilming, have not been scanned. The corresponding page numbers for these pages were dropped from the original index.