In 1999 and again in 2000, the University of Miami Libraries’ Cuban Heritage Collection (CHC) received two grants from the IMLS to digitize selected materials from our collections. With this funding, we chose 13 personal and corporate papers collections to digitize and make available online. To accomplish our goals, we published online the finding aids to each of those 13 collections and linked digital images of materials contained in each collection to their finding aids. In this way, we have digitally preserved over 3,500 items and created almost 14,000 digital images. In 2003, we digitized and made available online an additional collection and began creating electronic versions of the finding aids of other personal and corporate papers collections held by the CHC.

The invaluable support of the IMLS has allowed us to develop the CHC Digital, a central access point to research materials held by the Cuban Heritage Collection as well as act as a gateway to other research tools for Cuban and Cuban American studies. We will continue to create and provide access to digital images of selected archival materials from our holdings and to publish online our collection finding aids as they are created.

This project has been supported by the University of Miami Otto G. Richter Library's Digital Library Initiatives and faculty and staff from other departments. We are grateful to those who have made possible this endeavor.