IFLA Journal

The development of virtual libraries that offer Internet users access to full-text documents requires the teamwork of librarians, editors and webmasters. This paper proposes the option of cooperative virtual libraries and describes how the Latin American Social Science Council (Consejo Latinoamericano de Ciencias Sociales – CLACSO) organized a distance training course via the Internet for a group of librarians and editors of eighteen countries of Latin American and the Caribbean, pointing out the factors that must be considered for the organization of courses via the Internet.

Within the framework of its programmes in Librarianship and Information Studies, the University of Leon offers the course ‘Analysis of Document Content’, which has as its aim the treatment of documentary messages with a view to their retrieval. The third module of the course concentrates on representation and retrieval of sound, visual, audiovisual and multimedia materials. Prior to undertaking documentary study of audiovisual materials, the peculiarities of the sound and iconic codes are explained. Students are then introduced to the analysis of audiovisual materials, which mix image and sound, have a time dimension and are not directly decodifiable by the senses. Finally, the specific characteristics of digital materials are covered, one of the chief of these being their multimedia nature, bringing together text, image and sound. The separation between contents and medium leads such materials to be both compound (different codes) and distributed (stored in several files), as well as dynamic (easily modifiable). These characteristics imply new requirements in handling them which are sketched out as a corollary of this subject.

This paper reviews some of the early efforts to develop cost per use data for electronic collections and discusses some of the ways libraries, consortia, and publishers currently use unit cost information to make management decisions. Emerging trends in the standardization of electronic usage statistics and concurrent utilization of cost per use data to manage electronic collections hold tremendous potential for libraries and library consortia to increasingly employ reliable cost and use data to support collection development and management decisions.

Offers a vision of the institutions of Uruguay which aim to compile and preserve the audiovisuals that constitute the heritage of the country. The work focuses on the collection and the preservation showing how they work, which are the difficulties and which the advantages. Excellent institutions in this area are considered, standing out by their national reach, such as the ‘Archivo Nacional de la Imagen’ (National Image Archive) and the ‘Museo de la Palabra’ (Word Museum), whose commitment is to compile and conserve still and moving images in the first case, and voice in the second case. The Special Collections Section of the National Library and the Montevideo Photographic Archive are also included.

Cuba's Biblioteca Nacional José Martí houses a collection of Revolutionary graphic political posters that have generated international interest for their unique artistic style and controversial messages. Since the onset of the “Special Period,” a time of extreme economic hardship, librarians and archivists have tried to maintain the collection under less-than-ideal conditions. While library staff does not lack knowledge, energy, and dedication, the preservation situation at the BNJM remains grim. However, digitization of the poster collection can be used as a way to hedge against current deterioration and possible damage to or destruction of the collection during an episode of political change.