Travelling Librarian - University of Florida: Gainesville, North Florida

Despite intentions to update this blog while travelling, the intensity of meetings, travelling, note taking and preparation for each day prevented these best laid plans. Over the next few days I hope to make up for this by short descriptions of each stop.

The University of Florida, based in Gainesville, north Florida is a land-grant state university, set in a landscape of largely oak trees and spanish moss, as well as a few palm trees. The library is the strongest for Caribbean material in the state, and collects across the English speaking, Spanish speaking and French speaking Caribbean.  Due to the university's land grant status the library has a particular interest in areas such as tropical agriculture, sugar, citrus fruit, rural anthropology and sociology, and environmental issues. material from the Caribbean is bought for both the Latin American and Caribbean collection and other parts of the library system.

The collection is notable for its collections of newspapers (on microfilm and increasingly in digitised format). As well as newspapers the library also holds material such as the Bahamas Government records on microfilm and the Leeward Islands Gazette - now digitised. 

The University of Florida hosts the technology and equipment for the Digital Library of the Caribbean.