The Program

Building on the established libraries and research collections of its nineteen constituent centers, the Council of American Overseas Research Centers (CAORC) in 1999 launched the American Overseas Digital Library, a cost-effective, efficient, centralized, internet-based mechanism for the standardization and electronic delivery of important bibliographic and full-text primary and secondary source information from all CAORC member centers, covering both print collections and research collections in other media. Collaboration via CAORC coordinates presentation of major resource assets from CAORC member centers in Europe, the Near and Middle East, Inner Asia, South and Southeast Asia, and West Africa, and the New World, as well as from other collections in countries that host centers, and allows additional host-country in any language to be made accessible. To reflect the new level of participation and collaboration achieved, the name of the program was changed in November 2004 to Digital Library for International Research (DLIR). The resources targeted by this digital library program are vital to research and teaching needs in area, disciplinary, thematic, historical and current studies, but are currently largely inaccessible or are only available for use by scholars physically present in the centers.

The Digital Library for International Research is designed to include in one consolidated, web-based digital library a host of materials including bibliographic records, selected full-text materials, article-level indices, archival descriptions, databases and digitized versions of maps, dissertations, musical recordings, photographs, and other important and unique research resources representing the distributed holdings of all the CAORC member center libraries and other participating organizations. Through DLIR, overseas research centers are able not only to serve their primary constituents but also to expand their constituency to include any student or scholar world-wide with needs for foreign information access. Moreover, DLIR helps to bring this constellation of resource materials to the attention of scholars in disciplines that do not usually look beyond theoretical problems or beyond the continental United States.

The keystone of the Digital Library for International Research, and the first of its goals to be completed, is the on-line public access catalog containing the records of all the holdings in all participating libraries. DLIR's Online Catalog, is maintained at the University of Utah's Marriott Library and continues to grow rapidly as new materials are acquired and cataloged. The additional components of the DLIR program being brought online selectively include the initial sections of a foreign language materials archive, a consolidated database of photographs in the centers' unique historical and archaeological photo archives, an index of articles in uniquely-held foreign journals, and a map holdings database. The search engines and web interfaces for DLIR components have been thoroughly tested for ease of use, and are constantly being refined and improved.

Detailed information on the DLIR project, its bibliographic and resource components, the participating library collections, project administration and project funding is available on this site by using the links on the left.

Last updated: December 7, 2004

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