Meet Our Staff

Primary Responsibilities

The Director of the Latin American Library oversees policy, budgets, operations, collections, acquisitions, fundraising, public relations, a visiting research fellowship program, and the work of six permanent staff. She provides leadership and vision in developing programs and services related to Latin American Studies; maintains professional contacts appropriate to the mission of the Library; and represents Tulane University in local, national and international forums related to Latin American libraries and librarianship. She is also Executive Director of the Seminar on the Acquisition of Latin American Library Materials (SALALM), the foremost professional association for Latin American research libraries worldwide, and whose headquarters is hosted by Tulane University.

About Hortensia Calvo

Hortensia Calvo has been the Doris Stone Director of the Latin American Library since 2003. She holds a Licenciatura in Philosophy from the Universidad de Los Andes in Bogotá, Colombia, an MA in Spanish and Spanish American literature from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and a PhD in Spanish from Yale University. Her research interests and publications include the Spanish and Spanish American literary Baroque, and the social history of books and print culture in Latin America. She is also the co-author of Cartas de Lysi: La mecenas de Sor Juana en correspondencia inédita (Madrid: Vervuert-Iberoamericana, 2015), a critical edition of recently discovered correspondence by María Luisa Manrique de Lara y Gonzaga, Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz’ mentor. Before coming to Tulane she taught literature at Princeton University and served as Librarian for Latin America and Iberia at Duke, where she also taught in the Romance Studies Department. At Tulane she oversees all administrative functions, collection policies, programs and services of the Latin American Library. Since 2006, she serves as Executive Director of the Seminar on the Acquisition of Latin American Library Materials (SALALM).

Primary Responsibilities

The Curator of Special Collections is responsible for the organization, cataloging, preservation, and access to the LAL’s rare books, manuscripts, photograph, maps, and ephemeral materials. She also coordinates digitization projects and assist with collection development, reference duties, and long-term planning for preservation and access to the collections.

About Christine Hernández

Christine Hernández joined the staff of the Latin American Library in April 2012. She received her A.B. in Spanish and Anthropology from the University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana, where she was Phi Beta Kappa, and earned her MA and Ph.D. in Anthropology from Tulane University in 2000. She has published widely on the archaeology of Mesoamerica, specializing in the prehistory and ceramic traditions of Michoacán and the El Bajío regions of north-central Mexico, and the pre-Columbian painted Maya and highland Mexican codices.

In addition to her daily curatorial duties, Christine is regularly involved with several professional organizations including SALALM, the Society for American Archaeologists, and the Society for American Archivists. Her recent projects at the Latin American Library include the ongoing digitization of Special Collections materials to build digital collections in the Tulane Digital Library, online exhibits, and videos; as one of 3 PIs, she helped to finished a CLIR funded grant to convert our collection of Cuban-American radionovela audio tapes to digital; is working in collaboration with an NEH-funded grant project to build an online repository of Maya hieroglyphic texts; and she continues her ongoing work to put the LAL's special collections finding aids and inventories on-line via an ArchiveSpace database.

Information about my ongoing archaeological research and professional activities can be found on my homepage at tulane.academia.edu/ChristineHernandez/About.
 

Primary Responsibilities

The Latin American Library's Research and Instruction Librarian develops reference services and instructional programs for the Latin American Library in consultation with the Director. They combine advanced academic research expertise, information fluency, instruction and outreach with collection development in Latin American Studies. They have collection development duties for Cuba and Brazil. They also coordinate the LAL web site and the library’s presence on social media.

About Juan Pablo Gómez

Juan Pablo has a Ph.D. in Latin American Cultural and Literary Studies from The Ohio State University and an M.A. in Social Sciences from the Latin American Faculty of Social Sciences (FLACSO).  He has held teaching and research positions in libraries and archives, including the Institute of Nicaraguan and Central American History, at Central American University (IHNCA-UCA) in Managua, and the Association for the Advancement of Social Sciences (AVANCSO) in Guatemala. His research interests include Central American and Nicaraguan history, culture, and memory.

Primary Responsibilities

The Library Unit Coordinator manages the day-to-day operations in the front office, supervises student workers and acts as the LAL stacks and study carrel manager. She is also the person to contact regarding missing books.

About M. Verónica Sánchez

Verónica Sánchez joined the Latin American Library staff in February of 2004. Verónica received her Licenciatura in Sociology from the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM), where she served for ten years as Academic Research Technician at the UNAM’s Instituto de Investigaciones Sociales conducting social surveys, compiling social statistics and subject bibliographies, and analyzing archival and documentary sources. From 1994 to 2000 she served as Librarian in the Rare Book Collection of the Francisco Xavier Clavigero Library at the Universidad Iberoamericana in Mexico City, where she provided bibliographic instruction to faculty and students, provided specialized reference in the Humanities and Social Sciences, and organized the Manuel González Presidential Archives. She conducted graduate studies in History at the Universidad Iberoamericana. 

Primary Responsibilities

The Archival Associate participates in all phases of processing the LAL’s physical special collections, including arranging, describing and cataloging.  This position has primary responsibility for reproduction requests and assist user consultations on-site and remotely.

Primary Responsibilities

The Bibliographic & Administrative Assistant is responsible for handling all reproduction requests, graduate carrel assignments, collection development support, general office support, including events and publicity, and shares with other LAL staff retrieving special collections for consultation. As the LAL Administrative and Bibliographic Assistant, they are responsible for administrative, special events and publicity assistance, reproduction and digitization, as well as bibliographic support.