This text is taken from the Caribbean Literary Heritage website:

Why literary archives matter

In many ways, the archive shapes what is seen to constitute Caribbean literature, authorship and literary history. In a context where the colonial past forced exclusions and erasures, the need to think critically and creatively about the archive is especially significant. Identifying and preserving existing archives, mapping losses as well as finds, encouraging new acquisitions and bringing all possible sources into visibility will help create a more democratic and pluralising version of the literary past and thereby of the Caribbean’s cultural, national and regional heritage. 

As researchers on this project, we have not only been reading and writing about literary archives but we have also been keen to raise awareness around the value of authors’ papers among living writers – who, after all, are the future of the region’s literary past. Any authors who are currently building their archive can access advice. Marta Fernández Campa has worked closely with the writers Karen Lord, Sharon Millar, and NourbeSe Philip to explore their ideas and approaches to record-keeping and you can learn more about this LINK It is still relevant to note that far less has been archived in relation to women writers from the region more generally.

In the Anglophone region, it was Prof Kenneth Ramchand’s successful request for funds to found a collection of authors’ manuscripts at UWI in 1968 that laid the foundations for what is now the West Indiana Collection at the UWI Library at St Augustine, Trinidad. This remains a flagship literary collection and actively acquires the papers of living writers. UWI and especially Lorraine Nero, Senior Librarian, have been a key partner in this project. In the digital age, both literary creation and reception takes place in an online environment and this also has a profound impact on what we understand by an author’s archive. While it would be mistaken to assume that electronic material is more readily retrievable, more open and accessible, and easier to preserve than paper, the Digital Library of the Caribbean, launched in 2004, has transformed access to rare and hard to reach primary materials across the Anglophone, Francophone, Hispanaphone, and Dutch Caribbean. dLOC’s digital archiving helps overcome information biases against small islands and the organization has also modelled strong ethical principles in terms of cooperative working. dLOC, especially Laurie Taylor and Perry Collins, have been active partners on our digital outputs and have offered us a permanent home for our research.