LARRP (Latin Americanist Research Resources Project) has provided funding to digitize approximately 13,000 items held in the Digital Archive of Latin American and Caribbean Ephemera, which is hosted at Princeton University.  The Digital Archive of Latin American and Caribbean Ephemera is a steadily growing repository containing a previously unavailable subset of Princeton’s Latin American Ephemera Collection as well as newly acquired materials being digitized and added on an ongoing basis.

The bulk of the ephemera currently found in the Digital Archive of Latin American and Caribbean Ephemera was originally created around the turn of the 20th century and after, with some originating as recently as within the last year.  The formats or genre most commonly included are pamphlets, flyers, leaflets, brochures, posters, stickers, and postcards.  These items were originally created by a wide array of social activists, non-governmental organizations, government agencies, political parties, public policy think tanks, and other types of organizations in order to publicize their views, positions, agendas, policies, events, and activities.  The vast majority are rare, hard-to-find primary sources unavailable elsewhere.

Fernando Acosta-Rodriguez, Princeton's Librarian for Latin American Studies, Latino Studies, and Iberian Peninsular Studies, proposed this project to LARRP and has been instrumental in ensuring its success.

The subject categories represented in the archive are:

• Agrarian and rural issues
• Arts and culture
• Children and youth
• Economics
• Education
• Environment and ecology
• Gender issues
• Health
• Human and civil rights
• Labor
• Minorities, ethnic and racial groups
• Politics and government
• Religion
• Science and Technology
• Socioeconomic conditions and development
• Tourism

All of these subject categories have been further divided into numerous subcategories.  Even though materials produced in Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, and Venezuela are currently the most abundant in the repository, almost every country in the region is represented.  An effort is being made to provide a more balanced coverage in the future.

The Digital Archive of Latin American and Caribbean Ephemera is the latest phase in Princeton’s long commitment to building and providing access to its unparalleled Latin American Ephemera Collection.  Open online access to this previously inaccessible subset of the collection has been possible thanks to the generous support provided by the Latin Americanist Research Resources Project (LARRP) and to a three-year starting grant from the Council on Library and Information Resources (CLIR).  The goal of Digital Archive of Latin American and Caribbean Ephemera is to continue adding hundreds of new digitized ephemeral items per month in the coming years and turn this vast and exceptional collection from an inaccessible archive into a dynamic scholarly resource that will support present and future academic activities in interdisciplinary Latin American Studies and in the broader social sciences and the humanities.