Mission of the Rio de Janeiro Office

To accomplish this mission, the office maintains a multifaceted program of acquisitions including commercial purchases from local book vendors, attendance at book fairs and compact disc expositions, maintenance of exchange agreements, solicitation of donations, and buying trips to selected cities and countries.

A secondary mission is to maintain a Cooperative Acquisitions Program (CAP) for major research institutions, including the National Library of Medicine and the National Library of Agriculture. The Rio Office Cooperative Acquisitions Program acquires serials, and currently has forty-three participants who collectively subscribe to more than 1,200 periodicals selected from a list of 265 journal and newspaper titles.

Fundamental to the office's mission is the preservation of delicate materials. To this end the office has participated in a number of special microfilming projects.

Since 1986 the office has collected grassroots literature and "gray" publications that would otherwise be lost to scholarship. The office organizes the publications into fourteen categories, prepares indexes, and sends the material to Washington for microfilming. This collection, known as Brazil's Popular Groups, has been a resounding success among scholars researching Brazil's marginalized people and social movements.

For more than twenty years the office has also cooperated with the Brazilian National Library in the microfilming of selected newspapers from several Brazilian cities. And, in 1996, in concert with the Brazilian National Library, the office participated in a project to microfilm the personal papers of the renowned favela-dweller-turned-author, Carolina de Jesus. These papers will be available to the public in October 1999.

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