Building the virtual library dedicated to Puerto Rico’s former Governor, Dr. Pedro Rosselló González

Meet Sarai Lastra, PhD, Vice Chancellor of Information Resources/Director of Virtual Library at Universidad del Turabo

	Sarai Lastra, PhD
	Puerto Rico’s former Governor, Dr. Pedro Rosselló González

Recently, Universidad del Turabo (UT) began a very special project—building both a digital and physical library dedicated to Puerto Rico’s former Governor, Dr. Pedro Rosselló González. Rosselló held the office for eight years and Universidad del Turabo is now the permanent legal repository for his government papers.

Founded in 1972, Universidad del Turabo is located 15 miles southeast of San Juan, Puerto Rico. Belonging to the Sistema Universitario Ana G. Méndez (SUAGM), UT has campuses in Yabucoa, Cayey, Naguabo, Isabela and Ponce, and programs in Florida (Orlando and South Florida). UT currently serves a student population of more than 15,000 students, more than 180 faculty members and 600 senior lecturers.

“Similar to a presidential library, the mission of the former governor’s library is to support, preserve and make available for research the documents, audio-visual materials, photos and memorabilia,” said Sarai Lastra, PhD, Vice Chancellor of Information Resources/Director of Virtual Library at UT. Sarai and her team, comprised of one archivist, an assistant and two additional team members, have embarked on digitizing and preserving the 26,035 audio tapes, 7,791 VHS tapes and 371 videos, and countless documents, letters and other memorabilia that recount Dr. Rosselló’s government career.

“We modeled our project after former President Clinton’s Presidential Library project. Clinton was the first U.S. President to have born-digital documentation, such as e-mail, Web pages and other electronic formats. When they began planning and building the structure of the library, they also began digitizing and uploading pieces of the collection to the Web site so that everyone could follow the growth.”

As Sarai’s team works to digitize the materials, one of the key advantages they are discovering is that they are developing their standards according to the digital preservation system as they create it.

“We’ve designed this project as a pilot. We’re learning from OCLC and we’re testing which formats will work best for us. We’re defining these things in iterative phases of testing.”

An aggressive, two-year deadline for digitizing the audio and video portions of the collection—August 2011—has been dictated by the completion of the physical library building. In addition to audio and video, Sarai’s team is also making progress on digitizing documents, photos and letters.

“We started with OCLC digital services, to assist us with planning the conservation and preservation of the materials, to create a comprehensive digital preservation system. We’re targeting the VHS and the audio tapes, because they are at the highest risk of deteriorating, especially given our tropical climate here.
 
“In Puerto Rico, there isn’t a main library system, like a state library that oversees all of the academic, public, specialized libraries and school libraries. The library that we are creating is a specialized library and an archive, but within an academic setting. It is currently the only operating gubernatorial library within an academic institution in Puerto Rico.”

While they are storing the materials in their servers, they are organizing the materials using CONTENTdm, so that the community and users can watch the development of the project as the physical building is being constructed.

“While we’re building the infrastructure of the digital collection, we’re also meeting about the construction of the building. The whole idea is that the public doesn’t have to wait for the construction of the physical library, or for us to organize our archive, in order to have access to these historical documents to research and learn about the work of a prominent government figure. And as an added bonus, this digitization project is a valuable learning opportunity for us to develop professionally.”

Once the materials and the documents have been digitized, Sarai, who acts as administrator of CONTENTdm, will ask catalogers at the university library to assist with her team with identifying the resources in CONTENTdm. As the project develops, different teams and resources are being pulled into the project.

“Having a small core group is essential to moving the project forward effectively. UT ‘s Vice Chancellorship of Information Resources (VRI) is an information commons, which means that we have teams from the library, the virtual library, the archives, the informatics, communications and the information technology teams working concurrently on the project. I’m fortunate to have the ability to ask the various teams to support the digitization project as we need them. At UT, we have a wide range of very talented people as part of our information commons.”

Dr. Pedro Rosselló González was born in San Juan, Puerto Rico, on April 5, 1944. He graduated from Notre Dame Magna cum laude, then obtained his medical degree from Yale Medical School in 1970. He married the former Irma Margarita “Maga” Nevares in 1969. He completed his residency in general and pediatric surgery at Harvard University before returning to Puerto Rico in 1976. Dr. Rosselló received his master’s degree in public health in 1981, and in 1983, was named Chief of Pediatric Surgery and Director of the Surgery Department at UPR Medical School. In 1985, he was appointed Director of Health for the City of San Juan. Just three years later, on his first attempt at a major office, he lost a tight race for the office of Resident Commissioner, Puerto Rico’s non-voting delegate to the U.S. Congress. In 1993, he was elected Governor of Puerto Rico, and elected to a second term in 1996. 

Today, Dr. Rosselló and the former first lady reside in Virginia. Although he is not in office, Rosselló remains active in the current health care debate on behalf of residents of Puerto Rico. Very passionate about the issue, he recently published a book, El Derecho a la Salud (The Right to Health Care). Despite the distance and his involvement in this nationwide debate, Dr. Rosselló and his wife visit Puerto Rico frequently. They are very involved in the planning of both the physical and digital building of the library.

“A typical meeting with the former Governor and his wife involves us showing them photos and documents, and getting instant feedback. They give us the keywords, information and provide the context—who, what, where, when—from their experiences. And we enter the information right into the system. It’s amazing. Dr. Rosselló is adamant about creating an open archive where researchers and the general public have access to everything. Even when Dr. Rosselló and his wife are in Virginia, they access what we are building and give us their feedback. I think his attitude toward the collection reflects his strong background as a researcher and an educator.

“The value of our whole digital preservation system and the value of what OCLC has provided for us means helping us put all of this information into the hands of users. It sends the message, ‘We believe that each piece of this collection is important and we’re giving you the tools to retrieve this information.’ Using CONTENTdm to make the connections between the books that we have in our online catalog or our databases, and linking the pieces within the collection—from videos of speeches to the corresponding text documents—we’re putting something very powerful into the hands of users.”

Visit the Biblioteca Rosselló online:

http://www.bibliotecarossello.pr/

http://bpr.pr

(2010 01 06)