No. 2 April 2003

The Caribbean Documentation Centre, coordinator of the Caribbean Digital Library is currently preparing for relocation to new premises. Many librarians will spend an entire career without having to cope with the complexities of moving a fairly substantial collection of documents with a minimum disruption to the service. However, since this will be the third relocation of the Caribbean Documentation Centre since its establishment in 1977, the last one being just six years ago, the staff has developed a reluctant competence in this area.

What will keep our service going during the period of transition are the services which we offer on line and in this regard the Caribbean Digital Library assumes far greater significance, since it guarantees some measure of continuity during the time that the physical service is disrupted. We will not be in a position to provide loans of physical documents or a complete reference service which is fed by our collection of documents, but we urge our users during this time of transition to make use of the resources of the Caribbean Digital Library.

As December March 31 2003, the Caribbean Digital Library provided links to 601 web-based documents. 143 documents were added between January and March.

The table below gives an indication of the geographic distribution of documents in the CDL.

Persons and institutions interested in being a part of the CDL Consortium should indicate their interest by writing Sandra John, Chief, Caribbean Documentation Centre, United Nations ECLAC at the following address: sjohn@eclacpos.org .

Caribbean Documentation Centre

April 2003