Book Description

This report offers a baseline survey of the retrospective strength of, access to, and preservation of Latin Americanist resources in North American libraries. Information about collections, online bibliographic control, and the need for preservation is derived from analyses of a 550-item sample of Latin Americanist materials published between 1935 and 1965. Results of the analyses suggest that North American libraries have done a fairly good job of acquiring mainstream research materials from and about Latin America. Only 20 items from the 550-title sample are not held in the United States. Most are represented in the major online bibliographic utilities, OCLC and RLIN. Results suggest that continued funding for retrospective conversion and delayed original cataloging is a crucial component for increasing access to Latin Americanist publications. While findings highlight significant progress in providing machine-readable access to bibliographic records in Latin Americanist studies, they underscore the fact that preservation reformatting has so far saved only a small portion of the Latin American imprints. Four appendixes list projects for conversion and cataloging and details of study methodology. Fifty-two figures (graphs) illustrate relative holdings. (SLD)