Working in his spare time during the past 10 years, Luis Villar, the humanities and social sciences reference biographer, has compiled the first on-line database of Hispanic literature.
The database, which is in Spanish and available internationally over the Internet, contains the poetry of Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz, a 17th century Mexican nun widely considered to be the first great poet of the New World.
"I do things just because I like to," Villar said. "I felt like I needed to make a contribution to society." Villar also said it was his "Hispanic humanistic tradition" that inspired him to create the database.
During his free time and vacations, Villar worked to compile Sor Juana's poetry. Villar said he will make Sor Juana's plays available electronically by Winter term and added that he hopes to have her complete works available by next September.
"What I put in there was an act of love," Villar said. "It has never been a part of my responsibilities [at Baker Library]."
Villar said his passion for Sor Juana's writings began during his Catholic secondary school years in Puerto Rico. He has positive memories of the nuns and priests who were always his teachers, he said.
"After you grow up with them, it's easy for you to have an affinity for these things," Villar said. "It's the Catholicism in you coming out. Sor Juana was a woman of letters and an intellectual of extremely high caliber. She was the most learned person in Mexico during the Colonial Period."
After finishing the database, Villar's will make Miguel de Cervantes's "Don Quijote" texts available on-line. The College has a large "Don Quijote" collection, including commentaries that are not readily available, Villar said.
"That would be an ideal project that would bring a lot of prestige to Dartmouth," he added.
But Villar said he could not have completed the database without the help of consultants from the Kiewit Computational Center, who answered his questions about general computing and databases.
"I helped him figure out problems," David Fisher, assistant administrator of computing services, said.
Villar would also like to see students involved with proofreading the databases.
Although students praised the database as a valuable resource, many said they would like to see Baker Library obtain more Latin American reference materials, including novels.
"I think having a database is good, but there is a lack of texts in the library. Right now I think what the school really needs is just more texts in general," Eliana Marcenaro '97 said.
Latin American and Caribbean Studies major Kara McGee '97 agreed.
"I don't think the material that's available for LACS is up to date or up to par with that available for other studies like English and government," she said.
For students writing honors theses, access to Spanish language texts can be particularly difficult, LACS major Judi Flynn '95 said.
"I think it's really good that they're making an aggressive effort to get more Spanish language texts for the library, because I'm writing a thesis and it's been really difficult to get things for my topic," Flynn said. "I've been having to use the interlibrary loan a lot."
In addition, the on-line material could be very useful for individual classes, Flynn said.
