In accordance with a memorandum of understanding between CIFNAL and the Digital Library of the Caribbean (dLOC), the goal of this project is to work together to improve and increase electronic access to francophone documents. These may represent collections located in the French Caribbean or outside of the French Caribbean with a focus on this region.

Currently collaborating with the Haitian National Archives and other cultural collections in Haiti, dLOC and its francophone partners have concluded historic agreements to preserve and expand access to vital documents and materials. The success of the dLOC model is based on mutual international cooperation. CIFNAL members will bring additional linguistic and cultural assets to help dLOC reach out to new French-speaking partners.

Specifically, the two groups will work together to address needs related to:

• communication, partner relations, and translation
• meetings, training, fundraising, and grant writing
• collection development decisions and directions
• cultivation of relations with libraries and research institutes, specifically in France and the French Caribbean.

This is an excellent time to begin volunteering time to the project and there are many ways your expertise can help.  Whether working on collection development projects or helping assure the quality of the dLOC web site and its French language content and OCR data, there are a myriad of ways to get involved today.  One of the easiest is simply to sign up for a MYdLOC account which will allow you to submit new materials online to the digital library and also add and edit metadata directly.  Please sign up today at the following address:  http://www.dloc.com/ufdc/?a=dloc1&m=hmp

CIFNAL members who have questions about this project should contact Hélène Huet.