Comments on: Digital Library of the Caribbean: a review

By: Europeana: Europe's Digital Library | A Curious View of the World

Europeana: Europe's Digital Library | A Curious View of the World — Wed, 10 Feb 2010 21:16:31 +0000

[...] Digital Library of the Caribbean: a review [...]

By: Yvonne Young

Yvonne Young — Sun, 07 Feb 2010 17:59:35 +0000

I was surprised at the impact on me as I read about how Haiti’s libraries had been destroyed. I run a small Bed & Breakfast in Ireland and am always amazed at the number of, mainly American/Australian visitors, we have searching for their “roots”. (They are usually fourth or fifth generation from immigrants.) My own father was a keen reaearcher of his family tree and was hindered in his research by the loss of records when Somerset House in London was destroyed, by fire. My point is that there are many children from Haiti who will have “lost” their past, whether through being adopted overseas or through relocation in the country. Who knows the impact loss of records and research will have on them in the future?
All the best with your website.
Yvonne

By: Carolyn

Carolyn — Sat, 06 Feb 2010 23:52:09 +0000

I’m glad there is an effort underway to preserve the surviving documents from Haiti’s archives. There have been a number of fascinating books published in recent years about the Haitian Revolution including John Garrigus’s “Before Haiti” and Laurent Dubois’s “Avengers of the New World” that drew upon documents from Haitian archives. I wonder if it would be possible to get historians who did research in the archives before the earthquake to donate copies of their transcriptions or digital photographs to the Digital Library of the Caribbean so that the content of lost documents can be recovered.