Preserving Cuban Records

A major piece of the New World’s Colonial history will be preserved by a team of academics and archivists from the University of Florida and the Cuban National Archives. Researchers are making accessible more than 8 million handwritten records, which track the comings and goings of many ships and nearly every person who traveled between Spain and the New World from the 16th through 19th centuries, says John Ingram, the University of Florida’s director of library collections. Specialists will spend up to 18 months in Havana transferring the collection to microfilm and digital formats. Later, they will post a guide to these records on the Internet and sell copies of individual documents on CD-ROM. “These records will truly open a window in time,” Ingram says.&#151Susan Wenner