Statement of Purpose

Goals

  1. Foster professional development opportunities by cultivating a community of learning and practice around topics relevant to librarianship, archives and digital scholarship in connection with Latin American, Caribbean, Latinx, and Iberian resources. 
  2. Produce innovative and creative collaborative projects among members, such as the Latin American, Caribbean, U.S. Latinx, and Iberian Online Free E-Resources (LACLI) project and the Brazilian Presidential Transition (2018) web archive. 
  3. Facilitate networking and mentorship opportunities for LANE members at any stage of their careers. 
  4. Identify and develop strategies to collect, acquire, provide access to, preserve, and disseminate information about research resources for Latin American, Caribbean, Iberian, and Latinx Studies.
  5. Enhance awareness among members about important collections and resources available within and beyond the LANE network.
  6. Extend our reach with consortia and organizations as appropriate to further LANE objectives such as Ivy Plus Libraries Confederation and the Center for Research Libraries.
  7. Collaborate with vendors and publishers to acquire, preserve, and make more readily available Latin American, Caribbean, Iberian, and Latinx Studies research resources.

Organization

The group appoints a chair for a 3-year term. If more than one member wants to serve as chair, an election will be held. If two members want to co-chair, the group can decide on that matter. The chair position is voluntary; nominations are accepted. The chair will arrange meeting dates and times and develop meeting agendas, as well as lead the meetings. The chair will also track the progress of projects. The current chairs are Nelson Santana (2023-2026) and Alyson Williams (2023-2026).

LANE meets twice annually: once in the Spring, at the annual SALALM meeting (or online) and again in the Fall. The fall meeting may be hosted virtually or in-person by a member institution. In the latter case, the host institution's responsibilities include scheduling meeting facilities and providing lunch for the group. The fall meeting has historically been an opportunity for one of LANE's members to showcase collections and services at their host institutions. LANE members share responsibility for minute-taking or a meeting recorder is assigned by the chair. 

LANE maintains a website to facilitate collocation of and ease of access to LANE documentation and member institution web pages and OPACs or discovery layers. The chair(s) appoints a volunteer webmaster. Webmaster responsibilities include maintaining a record of consortium activities (including appropriate project documents and meeting minutes) on the LANE web page. Currently, Brown University hosts the LANE email list-serv and members have access to this resource for ongoing communication throughout the year.
Current LANE members include library professionals representing academic and research libraries based mainly in the northeastern United States that are committed to supporting research, teaching, and learning in Latin American, Caribbean, Iberian, and Latinx Studies.

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