New ArtStor Content

Recent addition to the ARTstor Digital Library:

Cuban Heritage Collection

We are pleased to announce that the University of Miami Libraries' unique Cuban Heritage Collection is now part of the ARTstor Digital Library.

The Cuban Heritage Collection, part of the University of Miami Libraries, is the premier collection of research materials for Cuban and Cuban-American studies. It is the most comprehensive library of manuscripts, rare and contemporary books, and unique materials for the study of Cuba, its history, its people, and its culture in the island and abroad. The images provided through ARTstor represent an important, thoughtfully curated subset of the material available through the Cuban Heritage Collection. The images to be made available through ARTstor have been selected from The Manuel R. Bustamante Photograph Collection and the Cuban Postcard Collection.

The Manuel R. Bustamante Photograph Collection consists of more than 600 black and white photographs of Cuba from the early 1900s to the 1930s. Many of these images were published by New York-based Munson Steamship Line in its Cuba Review magazine. The photographs depict various aspects of the life, architecture, and culture of Havana and other Cuban towns at the turn of the 20th century.

The Cuban Postcard Collection is a collection of postcards of Cuba and the Cuban experience outside of Cuba from the early 20th century to the present. It includes photographs and artist drawn postcards and provides views of many parts of the island as well as various aspects of Cuban communities in the United States and elsewhere.

In reaching this agreement, William D. Walker, University Librarian, University of Miami, and Max Marmor, ARTstor’s Director of Collection Development, expressed their shared enthusiasm in collaborating to use digital technologies to make these high quality images more broadly available for noncommercial educational and scholarly purposes. “We are delighted to make the Cuban Heritage Collection’s distinctive resources available to the larger ARTstor community. The benefits of this collaboration extend far beyond the partnership between the University of Miami Libraries and ARTstor. Students and scholars across the country will now have a unique vantage point for viewing photographs and postcards previously accessible only by visiting Miami. ARTstor’s venue provides the ideal way to study images and we are excited that others will have access to our rare resources” comments Walker. “We are especially pleased that our friends at the University of Miami Libraries have deci ded to share these wonderful collections, initially part of ARTstor’s nascent ‘hosting’ service, with the broader community of ARTstor users, ” adds Marmor. “Our hope is that other institutions for which we are hosting digital collections will similarly conclude they wish to foster the development of a rich ARTstor “network” in this manner.”

The University of Miami Libraries hold more than 2.5 million volumes and provide access to over 46,100 periodical titles. The Libraries’ Cuban Heritage Collection preserves and provides access to an extensive collection of books, periodicals, and archival materials on Cuba and the Cuban exile experience.

The contents of the Cuban Heritage Collection have, like other new elements of the ARTstor Digital Library, been integrated into the ARTstor Image Gallery. The Bustamante Collection and the Cuban Postcard Collection may be most readily searched for in ARTstor using the keywords “Bustamante collection” or “Cuban postcard collection” respectively. “Cuban heritage collection” will retrieve both source collections simultaneously.