Projects

DLIR Union Catalog

The union catalog of the Digital Library for International Research (DLIR) represents the collective holdings of 22 libraries at member American overseas research centers in the CAORC consortium and local partner libraries and archives. Each library or archive has a dedicated online public access page so their catalogs can be searched individually as well as across all the member collections. Funding for the startup of this project has been provided by the U.S. Department of Education's Technological Innovation and Cooperation for Foreign Information Access (TICFIA) program.

Local Archives and Libraries at Overseas Research Centers

The Local Archives and Libraries at Overseas Research Centers (LALORC) project, is an initiative of the American Institute for Yemeni Studies and the Council of American Overseas Research Centers. The project produced a directory of libraries and archives in various international locations, as well as bibliographic and digital projects. Bibliographic projects are incorporated into the DLIR union catalog and digital projects are cited below. For more details, consult the project website. Funding for this project has been provided by the U.S. Department of Education's Technological Innovation and Cooperation for Foreign Information Access (TICFIA) program.

Our new project, the Cooperative Digitization of International Research Materials (CDIRM) will utilize participating American overseas research centers’ connections to collaborate with foreign archives and special collections that hold unique and rare research materials. Selected materials from Guatemala, Algeria, Tunisia, Egypt, Israel, Palestine, Yemen, and Mongolia will be made easily and freely available over the Internet to American and international scholars and students. Not only are most of these materials uncataloged, unavailable, or unknown to scholars, most are extremely difficult to access (because of location, unsettled political conditions, privacy issues, or bureaucratic procedures). The Coordinator of the Digital Library for International Research, located at the Center for Research Libraries, will act as program manager. As were the creation of the DLIR union catalog and the LALORC program described above, this project is funded by a 4-year matching grant from the U.S. Department of Education's Technological Innovation and Cooperation for Foreign Information Access (TICFIA) program.

Digital collections

African Language Materials Archive (ALMA)

The African Language Materials Archive (ALMA) is an initiative of The West African Research Association (WARA), the Council of American Overseas Research Centers (CAORC), Columbia University Libraries--African Studies, and the Information Society Division of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO). This initiative aims at increasing dissemination of, and access to materials published in indigenous African languages through digital formats.

Photo Archives of the Center for Art and Archaeology at AIIS

The Center for Art and Archaeology, is one of two research centers of the American Institute of Indian Studies (Gurgaon, India). The Photo-Archives contains a unique collection of more than 140,000 photographs and slides of South Asian art and architecture. Plans of temples, mosques, tombs, and secular buildings, supplement the Center’s outstanding photographic collection. Approximately 50,000 images of a total of 140, 000 have been digitized and are available through the Digital South Asian Project and the DLIR.

Mapping Mediterranean Lands (MEDMAPS)

Mapping Mediterranean Lands (MEDMAPS) showcases sixteen important early maps and related information from the collections of ten American overseas research center libraries in the Mediterranean region. This three-year project, funded by a grant from the U.S. Department of State, Education and Cultural Affairs (ECA), 2002-2005, completed a comprehensive survey of maps in the collections of American research centers in the Mediterranean area and created bibliographic records that are accessible through the DLIR catalog.

Middle East Research Journals (MERJ)

The Middle East Research Journals (MERJ) project, funded by a grant from the Institute of Museum and Library Services (2002-2006), provided digital access to five complete journals held at American Overseas Research Centers in the Middle East in the CAORC consortium. Additional materials created for this project are bibliographic records for 1,900 journals held at seven centers in the Middle East, a searchable index of three research journals, preservation microfilm for five research journals.

Digitalized Legal Texts of Outer Mongolia and the People's Republic of Mongolia

The American Center for Mongolian Studies (Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia) developed this collection of nearly 1,600 digital scans of laws and regulations written in Mongol script. It covers an interesting array of topics from the Mongolian People's Republic constitution to regulations about harvesting pine cone seeds. The project received support from the US Department of Education TICFIA program under the Local Archives and Libraries at Overseas Research Centers (LALORC) project.

Catalog of the Center for Archaeological and Environmental Research

The Center for Archaeological and Environmental Research (Karachi, Pakistan) is directed by Dr. Kaleem Lashari and Dr. Asma Ibrahim. This partial list of books in the Center’s library includes titles in Roman scripts but does not include the manuscripts and books in Sindhi, Balochi, Urdu, Persian, and Arabic. This data was collected by the American Institute of Pakistan Studies with support from the US Department of Education TICFIA program under the Local Archives and Libraries at Overseas Research Centers (LALORC) project.

Khmer Language Books from the National Library of Cambodia

The Center for Khmer Studies (Phnom Penh and Siem Reap, Cambodia) Cambodian books project, funded by the US Department of Education's TICFIA program, consists of digital versions novels, textbooks, and educational journals from the National Library of Camodia's extensive colonial and pre-1975 era collection. Most of these materials, in Khmer, French and English, have never been digitized, and are not available in collections outside Cambodia. A Khmer search engine was developed to facilitate searching of the texts in Khmer.

Furniture and Decorative Arts of Sri Lanka

This digital project, sponsored by the American Institute for Sri Lankan Studies (Colombo, Sri Lanka), documents furniture and other decorative arts from the Portuguese, Dutch and British Periods (17th - 19th centuries) in the collections of the National Museums of Sri Lanka and in local private collections. The descriptive inventory and accompanying images are searchable here.