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About

What is in the Archive

Raíces Cultural Center wants to make available its multimedia cultural resources to the community via this digital archive. Through this searchable portal, those interested can access digital exhibits, topical collections, multimedia items and information related to the organization's mission of preserving cultural roots through the arts, history and ecology.

These collections include our organizational history, documentation of traditional arts and living cultures, oral history collections and community collections shared by other members of our cultural community who want to document their history and stories.

History

Raíces Cultural Center was founded in 2008 with a focus on the preservation of folkloric Caribbean arts and cultural traditions. This includes a diversity of backgrounds and the melding together of Indigenous, African, European, and Asian cultures. In the sixteen years that Raíces has been in existence as an organization we have expanded our mission and cultural exchange initiative to include building cultural bridges and culture sharing to document the rich diversity of backgrounds that have come together in the diaspora and the evolution and history of culture in our home state of New Jersey. We have begun collaborations with other NJ culture bearers and cultural groups and organizations to create exhibits, documenting and sharing their cultural work, history and traditions through photos, videos, writing and oral history.

In addition to these multimedia resources, the Raíces Digital Archive also makes accessible resources related to its programs and activities, thereby documenting the Center's rich visual, artistic and culturally rooted history, and creating an additional educational tool for participants in local cultural programs offered by Raíces.

Any culture bearer, group or organization in and around our community is invited to collaborate, please get in contact by emailing raices@raicesculturalcenter.org.

Raíces Digital Archive Advisor

Dr. Miraida Morales   

Miraida is Senior Product Manager at eBay and is the original creator of our online archive interface. Miraida holds a Ph.D. in Library and Information Science from the Rutgers School of Communication and Information, and a MLIS degree with a certificate in digital library technology, also from Rutgers University. She also holds a M.A. in French Studies from NYU and a B.A. in Comparative Literature from the same. As a taxonomist before pursuing the Ph.D., Miraida used her expertise in classification, taxonomy development, and data management to develop navigational taxonomy for an eCommerce website and to design the software tool to manage that taxonomy. Prior to the MLIS, Miraida worked in trade book publishing for 8 years. During her time in the book industry, she managed export sales for a number of international regions including Latin America, the Caribbean, and the Middle East.