Electronic version of Richard Ligon's "A True and Exact History of Barbados" (1657)

Thanks to David Chan Smith, Assistant Professor in the Department of History, Wilfrid Laurier University an electronic teaching edition of Richard Ligon's "A True and Exact History of Barbados" (1657) is now available at:


The edition includes a basic introduction and footnotes for this important early modern Caribbean text. The text is also set in modern typescript. It is freely available for public distribution and undergraduate teaching thanks to the generosity of the Text Creation Partnership and Harvard University Libraries.

It is hoped that the text will evolve as a collaborative editing project whereby readers can contribute additional footnotes or information that will then be recompiled into a new edition.

http://www.wlu.ca/docsnpubs.php?grp_id=12753

Bridgetown, Barbados enters UN World Heritage List

Earlier this month the historic section of the capital of Barbados became the Caribbean country's first entry on the United Nations-managed World Heritage List after a committee of experts approved its inscription and that of two other sites.

The World Heritage Committee, meeting in Paris, said Bridgetown and its garrison deserved a place on the List, which is comprised of more than 900 cultural or natural sites around the world regarded as having outstanding universal value.

The UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) reported that the committee found the Bridgetown site – comprised of a well-preserved old town and a nearby military garrison – to be an outstanding example of British colonial architecture.

“With its serpentine urban layout, the property testifies to a different approach to colonial town planning compared to the Spanish and Dutch colonial cities of the region, which were built along a grid plan,” UNESCO said in a press statement.

We congratulate Barbados on this acheivement.

Central Bank of Barbados statistics

CENTRAL BANK OF BARBADOS ANNOUNCES MAJOR CHANGES TO THE PRESENTATION OF ITS ON-LINE STATISTICS

Users of the Central Bank of Barbados’ statistics can now access them more easily.

The Bank has recently announced that anyone can download from its website – http://data.centralbank.org.bb/ – most of its statistical data in Excel format. The longest series at the highest frequency is posted on the site, so that persons can more conveniently download information on a range of frequently-requested information.

In announcing this change in the presentation, the Bank said that the new format is in keeping with international standards. The statistical information on the website is definitely more user-friendly and much easier to manipulate. The use of Excel, rather than pdf, facilitates maneuverability, and the inclusion of graphs definitely enhances the presentation.

Yet another feature of this enhancement is the more timely publication of the information, as it is uploaded as soon as it becomes available, rather than monthly or annually as occurred in the past.

The data in the Economic and Financial Statistics (EFS) is available in the new format and cover more than 600 variables, pertaining to the monetary authorities, commercial banks, non-bank financial institutions, interest rates, securities, public finance, foreign trade and general statistics. Persons downloading the data can choose variables by selecting the period of interest and/or the preferred frequency, i.e. monthly, quarterly or annually.

And very soon the statistics contained in the Statistical Digest (ASD) and the Balance of Payments (BOP) Survey will be integrated into this format.

Historically, this information was prepared and published in hardcopy in the monthly Economic and Financial Statistics, the Statistical Digest or the Balance of Payments, both of which are produced annually. The Bank has discontinued the hard copy publication of these statistics and instead is publishing all of the statistical information on-line.