Digital Humanities and Nineteenth Century Music: Some Perspectives and Examples from Latin America

Abstract

The advent of digital resources, the Internet, and an interconnected globe has deeply affected the humanities and its research. Music scholars in Latin America, like everywhere else, have observed this explosion of digital information sharing, but not everyone has been able to take advantage of the new opportunities afforded by this technology. On the one hand, advantages of digitization are slowly becoming recognized as tools to fight the enormous size of the region (Latin America), especially through technology's ability to easily and promptly disperse sources across great distances. In addition, digitization acts as an aid in countering the endemic lack of economic resources, and more broadly offers a path towards making the academic world a more connected and equal place. On the other hand, it is undeniable that the digital revolution has not reached people across the globe equally. Digital segregation is a problem that deeply impacts numerous nations around world; and for Latin America and the Caribbean, it has meant a slower pace of incorporation into the digital era. Key databases like JSTOR and the various READEX products are still largely unavailable to scholars in Latin America, and, given the steep price of such resources, the fight for a world of open-source information is becoming increasingly political.