1. Strategic Directions and a Vision for the Future
LARRP Today
Strategic Directions and a Vision for the Future

2. 2012 Transition Existing projects winding down Value for members
Allocation of resources
Plan forward
Judy’s talk does a good job of taking us up to what I call LARRP’s 2012 transition. That year, the advisory committee had a meeting in Austin where we had a frank discussion about how we needed to explore ways to continue to provide value for our membership, and to honor the dues they pay, in the context of various LARRP and grand funded projects winding down.
For example, LAPTOC could no longer be hosted at Texas and had wrapped up. Reached a point where meetings were not leading to much action. Agreed to move forward with future directions and strategic plan.

3. Bylaws and Leadership Formalize governing procedures
Provide opportunities for participation among membership
Elections
So, one of the first things we did, at Judy’s request, was to develop a set of bylaws to govern the organization and formalize its leadership structure. I won’t provide you with all the gory details, but just say that the goal was to provide a defined structure for the group and opportunities for participation among membership with regard to serving on the Advisory Committee and the various Working Groups that I will describe shortly.
The Bylaws were approved by membership in 2014 and elections were held that year. If you’re interested in reviewing the bylaws, they are available on the LARRP web site. And just know that if you want to become involved in LARRP, opportunities are there.

4. Strategic Directions LARRP mission unchanged
3 areas of programmatic activity
Increase access to primary sources through digital initiatives
Collections analysis and Distributed Resources Project
Promote visibility of Latin American content in various arenas
New working groups
The most important development to come out of the LARRP transition period was the Strategic Directions Document, created by the Advisory Committee and designed to guide LARRP activities into the future.
Important to note that the LARRP Mission as described by Judy remains unchanged. [LARRP is a consortium of research libraries that seeks to increase free and open access to information in support of learning and scholarship in Latin American Studies. It mobilizes collaborative activities among individuals and organizations on a global scale and particularly cultivates relationships within the academic library community.]
We also identified 3 areas of programmatic activity that would receive particular attention moving forward: 1) access to primary sources through digital initiatives. Many of the project proposals we receive fall into this category. Such as the Princeton Ephemera digitization project by Fernando Acosta. 2) Collections analysis and DRP (mentioned by Judy). What to do with this data is important. How do we communicate it to administrators and how does it shape what we do? 3) Promote visibility of LA content in various arenas including indexes, web-scale discovery solutions, and other similar tools.
Document also described new working groups.

5. Working Groups Communication and Outreach
Collaborative Collections and Analysis
Digital Initiatives
Resource Discovery
LARRP has 4 working groups, all of which are represented on the Advisory Committee.
Communication and Outreach, currently chaired by Teresa Chapa, has been part of LARRP for a long time. This group promotes current projects and acts as a liaison with the broader Latin Americanist community. A recent addition to the group’s duties includes encouraging and facilitating membership and participation in LARRP.
Collaborative Collections and Analysis – currently chaired by Paul Losch – promotes the expansion of the Latin American Studies collection by analyzing its members’ acquisitions trends and encouraging deep collecting in specific areas of interest. The DRP lives here. Our goal is to take the DRP and use it to provide deeper, useful analysis for members.
Digital Initiatives Working Group – currently chaired by Mei Mendez- works to increase access to primary sources for research on Latin America through digitization and other initiatives. Post-custodial archives may become a priority for this group.
Finally, the Resource Discovery Working Group, chaired by David Dressing, is a completely new group that facilitates the visibility of research resources for Latin America. This group works with content aggregators, discovery tool providers, and other information creators for the benefit of the Latin Americanist research community.
Opportunities for LARRP members to become involved in all of these initiatives. A call will go out after SALALM.

6. Chicago 2014 Leadership transition Working group charges clarified
New criteria for proposals
In 2014 we had held elections for the LARRP Advisory Committee, including Chairs for the working groups, in line with the new Bylaws. In September 2014, the Center for Research Libraries hosted a LARRP meeting that included the newly-elected Advisory Committee members, along with “legacy members” - Dan Hazen, Carolyn Palaima. Goal was to have a smooth leadership transition and discussion of working group charges for new chairs to make sure all were on the same page.
Also at the top of our list was to create new criteria for proposals.
Strategic document provided guidance with 6 principles, stating that LARRP would support projects that 1) work within existing systems, rather than building new infrastructure; 2) adhere to open access principles; 3) Support scholarship in a variety of disciplines; 4) provide models for future collaboration; 5) involve institutional partners within Latin American whenever possible; and 6) provide added value to the Latin Americanist research community as a whole.
But we needed something concrete so that individuals and institutions seeking LARRP support knew what to provide and so that we had some sort of consistency among proposals.
Mei Mendez took the lead on this as digital initiatives chair, and the resulting document clarified many things, including the fact that LARRP solicits different kinds of proposals, from digitization projects seeking funding, to proof of concept projects seeking funds or non-monetary endorsements.
The call for proposals was the first submitted under the new criteria and we are optimistic. Some traditional digitization projects, but also a request for an endorsement of an Argentine open access approval plan project. Advisory committee may also develop proposals.

7. Moving Forward LARRP as a place for project support
Working groups will take on some of the major issues facing Latin American and Area Studies librarianship
Pushing the envelope on open access
So where do we go from here?
LARRP will continue to be an entity that vets and provides funding and support for, open access projects. We have several projects in progress, including the aforementioned Princeton Ephemera project, and also the DLOC digitization of newspapers. We are in the middle of evaluating proposals submitted for the round.
Through our new working group setup, we have positioned LARRP to take on some of the major issues and challenges facing Latin American and Area Studies librarianship, including, but not limited to, providing access to primary resources, collaborative collection development and its impact on our partners in Latin America; assessment of collection development trends in a time of shrinking resources and shift in government and granting agency funding. The prevalence of discovery tools and other content aggregators.
And we want to be a place where we push the envelope on open access. To that end, I have appointed a new faculty rep: Gustavo Fischman from Arizona State who has a solid academic background in this area, particularly focused on Mexico and Brazil.
I want to end by saying that these initiatives have Dan Hazen’s imprint all over them. Perhaps more than anyone, he pushed us to do more to justify the dues we gather from our members, to collaborate with partners in Latin America, and to lead the way in international librarianship – and it is my intention to do what I can in these areas to honor his legacy.

8. Questions?