About the project

This register has been created as an open-access search tool to facilitate access to and awareness of the many literary archives of Caribbean writers that can be found in repositories (archives, libraries and institutes). 

The design for the register follows standard archival description, with variations and flexibility to accommodate the different ways in which metadata is collected by individual repositories, particularly when collections are still being processed. We wanted to make the collection easy to search for scholars researching Caribbean authors so the field “creator” assigned to the person who creates the archive and authorises its acquisition (often the author but not always so) has been replaced here by “author.” (Information on creators might be accessible through the repositories websites).  

The metadata included in the location register is sourced from the description of collections in repositories, and sometimes these (especially at folder level) have been created by the team of researchers who have worked on the register.

The register has endeavoured to include collections in the Caribbean region where there is a long and strong archival tradition in the Caribbean invigorated by the work and scholarship of archivists, literary critics and writers as well as educational institutions. All the same, it is important to acknowledge that the diasporic lives of writers, as well as the imbalance of resources, with more financial support and funding in diasporic locations, means that many collections are located in the US and UK. 

Researchers are invited to add to the register; please contact Alison Donnell.

Contributors

Created by Dr. Marta Fernández Campa with specialist support and advice from Dr. David Sutton and Perry Collins and assistance from Alison Donnell, Jennifer F. McDerra, Zakiya McKenzie, and Robert Vives.

The research for the creation of this location register was funded by the Leverhulme Trust as part of the work of the Caribbean Literary Heritage research project [https://www.caribbeanliteraryheritage.com]. It is fittingly hosted by the Digital Library of the Caribbean, the home to Caribbean digital scholarship and collaboration, which offers access to the underlying project data.  [https://dloc.com]

Further Reading

Donnell, Alison. “Chapter 1. Caribbean Literary Archives and the Politics of Location: Challenging the Norms of Belonging.” The Future of Literary Archives: Diasporic and Dispersed Collections at Risk, edited by David C. Sutton, Amsterdam: ARC, Amsterdam University Press, 2018, pp. 15-32. https://doi.org/10.1515/9781942401582-004

Bastian, Jeannette A., et al., editors. Decolonizing the Caribbean Record: An Archives Reader. Litwin Books, 2018.

Campa, Marta Fernández. “Literary correspondence: letters and emails in Caribbean writing.” Comma 2017, no. 1, 2017, pp. 99-110. https://doi.org/10.3828/comma.2017.8

Sutton, David. “Preface.” Comma 2017, no. 1, pp. 1-24. https://doi.org/10.3828/comma.2017.1

Donnell, Alison. “Introduction.” Caribbean Quarterly, vol. 62, no. 3-4, 2016, pp. 307-320. https://doi.org/10.1080/00086495.2016.1260243

Campa, Marta Fernández and Evelyn O’Callaghan, editors. The Journal of West Indian Literature, vol. 29, no. 1, 2021. https://www.jwilonline.org/downloads/vol-29-no-1-april-2021/

Risam, Roopika and Kelly Baker Josephs, editors. The Digital Black Atlantic, University of Minnesota Press, 2021. https://dhdebates.gc.cuny.edu/projects/the-digital-black-atlantic