Digital Collections Center at FIU Libraries

Call Directions Website

Digital Collections Center at FIU Libraries The Digital Collections Center hosts unique collections of cultural, historical, scholarly, educatio

Part of Florida International University Libraries – https://library.fiu.edu/

Digital Collections - http://digitalcollections.fiu.edu/
The goal of the Digital Collections Center is to build online collections of enduring value for the university and broader patron community by identifying, digitizing, and preserving information resources of scholarly, educational, and civic interest. Collections include: The Miami Metropolitan Archive, Everglades Digital Library, Mile Markers, Coral Gables Memory, Tequesta Online, the Digital Library of the Caribbean, and many more. The Center’s digital collections focus on local and regional materials of historical, scientific, cultural, and educational importance. FIU Libraries’ digital preservation program adheres to international standards and best practices, documenting technical, administrative, preservation, and rights management metadata, along with the archival digital files, which are deposited in the Florida Digital Archive. Institutional Repository - http://digitalcommons.fiu.edu/
The IR, FIU Digital Commons, is a repository for capturing, archiving, and disseminating the research, creative, and scholarly output of the Florida International University community. The Digital Collections Center works with departments, centers, and individual faculty to select, submit, manage, and preserve digital content in FIU Digital Commons. This includes technical reports, pre-publications, research papers, and presentations. Digital Commons offers a suite of services including FIU branded faculty webpage hosting (Selected Works), journal hosting and publishing services, collection building, as well as conference and event management and promotion. Accessing the Collections
The majority of the content served by the FIU Digital Collections Center is free and open to the public. The center will be launching a copyright and intellectual property website in the coming months in order to provide information to the university community about user and author rights as well as FIU policies related to digital collections. Disclaimer
Posts made by anyone other than the official "Digital Collections Center at FIU Libraries” do not necessarily reflect the views of the Digital Collections Center, nor Florida International University.

Four conferences, three days, two posters, one paneled discussion, two online presentations and two in-person = one very...
10/20/2026

Four conferences, three days, two posters, one paneled discussion, two online presentations and two in-person = one very busy Digital Collections Center!
Last week our team presented at Southeast Florida Library Information Network, the DLF - Digital Library Federation, SESAME @ JCDL, and the SoutheastData Librarian Symposium - on AI search, archival data ethics, community data governance, repository migration, and building library-museum partnerships that actually work. What a week for conferences!
💛💙

South Florida archives folks (or folks who just love archives!) - Archives Day 2026 is coming up! First day to participa...
10/05/2026

South Florida archives folks (or folks who just love archives!) - Archives Day 2026 is coming up! First day to participate is tomorrow, via Zoom. In person even later this month at FIU Libraries on Oct. 27th.
Full schedule and details:
https://digitalscholarship.fiu.edu/pages/?page=Archives%20Day&ln=en
Hope to see you there!

The answer to yesterday’s quiz: Photo B is real, and Photo A was made by AI. Good job to all who guessed correctly! But ...
10/02/2026

The answer to yesterday’s quiz: Photo B is real, and Photo A was made by AI. Good job to all who guessed correctly!
But if you guessed wrong, it’s understandable - the version of Miami Beach on Photo B is gone. The islands have changed, and the Nautilus hotel and radio tower are long removed (today that area is the Mount Sinai campus). With no landmarks to recognize, sometimes a real photo can feel less familiar than a fake. Meanwhile, the fake looks like the Miami Beach we all picture - hotels along the shore, a crowded beach - and AI is very good at familiar.
So what else gave Photo A away? It's extra wide, like a more modern panorama. It's sharp from corner to corner, when real aerials from this era are often much softer/blurrier.
But the biggest difference is provenance. Photo B has a photographer, a date (October 1, 1926 to be exact!), a location, and a home in the South Florida Photograph Collection at Museum of Miami (See the original: dpanther.fiu.edu/record/19512). Photo A has none of that.
Happy Archives Month - here's to the collections that keep the real story, 100 years later.
Round 2 is coming next week! Thanks for playing!

Museum of Miami

October is American Archives Month, and today is Electronic Records Day! This year's Electronic Records Day theme is "AI...
10/01/2026

October is American Archives Month, and today is Electronic Records Day! This year's Electronic Records Day theme is "AI: Truths & Traps," so we're kicking off a little challenge: Is this real?

One is a genuine historical 1920's photo from FIU's digital collections, and the other was made by AI. Your job is to guess which is which!

AI-generated "historical" images are everywhere online, and they can be surprisingly convincing. Knowing what to look for, and where a photo actually came from, matters more than ever. That's what archivists do every day!

Which photo is the real 1926 Miami Beach?

Fifty years ago today, FIU's brand-new student newspaper "The International" printed its third issue, and the student go...
09/30/2026

Fifty years ago today, FIU's brand-new student newspaper "The International" printed its third issue, and the student government was gearing up for a Fall Festival called "The Next 100 Years." The Cinema Center lined up three visions of the future: "Things to Come," "Star Trek," and "2001: A Space Odyssey." (The rest of the day was more down-to-earth, with pony rides, puppet shows, 10-cent hot dogs, and free b**r at the evening dance.)

The issue also caught an estimated 4,500 students waiting in long lines on Change Day, the in-person rush to add and drop classes at the start of the quarter. (The photo caption calls it "Chance Day," which may be closer to how it felt) Elsewhere: $3 parking stickers, and a call for students to wear their brightest outfits for the cover of ELAN, FIU's very first yearbook. On the front page, the Board of Regents approved a new master's program in water quality, alongside word that FIU was developing a water research center.

Browse the full issue from FIU Special Collections and University Archives in dPanther: https://dpanther.fiu.edu/record/6915

09/29/2026

Some artists paint what's in front of them. Millard Wells also painted what had disappeared.

This watercolor shows Dr. Henry Perrine's home on Indian Key, which was burned in an 1840 attack during the Second Seminole War. Wells was a serious student of Keys history, and many of his paintings grew out of that study.

He first visited the Keys in 1966 and moved there for good in 1968, trading cold Illinois winters for the islands. He was a member of the American Watercolor Society and a founder of the Florida Watercolor Society. He painted shrimpers, fishermen, and cigar makers, along with the tarpon and bonefish he loved to chase. For more than 30 years, his watercolors were the most coveted prizes at Keys fishing tournaments.

This postcard comes from the Haffenreffer Collection at Florida Keys History Center - Monroe County Public Library, shared through Mile Markers: Linking Keys History in FIU Libraries' dpanther: https://dpanther.fiu.edu/record/16196

Happy birthday to Ed Sullivan, born on this day in 1901! 🎂Sullivan was a regular in South Florida — his show made an ann...
09/28/2026

Happy birthday to Ed Sullivan, born on this day in 1901! 🎂

Sullivan was a regular in South Florida — his show made an annual trip down here to broadcast from Miami Beach. In this photo from around 1960, he's deep in conversation with North Miami Mayor Thomas Sasso (and Sasso looks like he's really making his point!).

The photo is part of the Greater North Miami Historical Society Photograph Collection, digitized and available in dPanther: https://dpanther.fiu.edu/record/62932

Want to see Sullivan in action? Our colleagues at the Lynn and Louis Wolfson II Florida Moving Image Archives just shared WTVJ footage from July 1965 of him celebrating Miami Beach's 50th anniversary, with a gorgeous panorama across Biscayne Bay: https://www.facebook.com/share/v/1BXPdzHWsW/

We went digging in the archives and found proof that Panthers have loved Dolly Parton for a long time. In November 1980,...
09/25/2026

We went digging in the archives and found proof that Panthers have loved Dolly Parton for a long time. In November 1980, SGA hosted FIU's first-ever "American Week," and one of the big events was a Dolly Parton and John Wayne Look-Alike Contest in the Rathskeller, with 25-cent b**r. Just a few weeks later, 9 to 5 hit theaters.

We lost Dolly last month and are still processing it. It's hard to think of anyone who gave more joy away so freely. She was a songwriter, businesswoman, and philanthropist, and she put millions of free books into kids' hands through her Imagination Library. Few people spent so much of a life making other people feel welcome. Happy Dolly Parton Day. 🦋 This year it means a little more.

From Élan, the 1981 FIU yearbook, Special Collections & University Archives. Browse the full yearbook on dPanther: https://dpanther.fiu.edu/record/7703

FIU Alumni

Conference planning in the 1980s was clearly ruthless, but Miami Beach had the ultimate pitch: trade frozen convention c...
09/23/2026

Conference planning in the 1980s was clearly ruthless, but Miami Beach had the ultimate pitch: trade frozen convention centers and brick-wall views for sunshine, jai alai, Cuban nightspots, and stone crabs.
Check out this vintage promo brochure from the City of Miami Beach Digital Archives, hosted in our dPanther digital repository. It’s a candid snapshot of classic South Florida marketing from decades past!
Check out the full brochure at: https://dpanther.fiu.edu/record/87894
Miami Beach Convention Center

Happy National Ice Cream Cone Day! 🍦Meet Abril Lamarque (1904–1999), a Cuban-born cartoonist, caricaturist, designer, an...
09/22/2026

Happy National Ice Cream Cone Day! 🍦

Meet Abril Lamarque (1904–1999), a Cuban-born cartoonist, caricaturist, designer, and art director who built his career in New York. In the 1920s he created Monguito, credited as the first original Spanish-language comic strip, and he invented the "radiocature," a caricature you drew at home by following his instructions over the radio. He was also an amateur magician.

Here he is doing something a little less revolutionary: enjoying a cone on a sunny day. The look on his face says he's taking this very seriously.

Explore more from the Abril Lamarque Collection at FIU Special Collections & University Archives: dpanther.fiu.edu/record/72679

Address

11200 SW 8th Street/FIU Library
Miami, FL
33199

Opening Hours

Monday 8:30am - 6pm
Tuesday 8:30am - 6pm
Wednesday 8:30am - 6pm
Thursday 8:30am - 6pm
Friday 8:30am - 6pm

Telephone

+13053486485

Alerts

Be the first to know and let us send you an email when Digital Collections Center at FIU Libraries posts news and promotions. Your email address will not be used for any other purpose, and you can unsubscribe at any time.

Share