Preserving Trinidad and Tobago’s culture involves more than looking after written records. Oral traditions also have a place in that work, and a study by Sujin Huggins examines how the country’s national library system helps preserve and promote them. Published in 2016 in Storytelling, Self, Society, the article explores the role of the National Library and Information System, NALIS, in encouraging cultural awareness and identity. Its focus places storytelling within a broader question: how public libraries help a society maintain and understand its cultural traditions. Huggins situates that responsibility within an international framework. The article’s abstract points to a joint manifesto from the International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions and UNESCO that identifies promoting culture and oral traditions as an important public-library role. The study connects that role to Trinidad and Tobago’s diverse cultural identities and politically complex history. In Huggins’ account, the library participates both in preserving culture and in shaping national identity. The article reviews the country’s oral traditions and considers ways the library preserves and promotes culture. Its central subject offers an enduring perspective on the purpose of a public library: alongside its written collections, it can help sustain the spoken traditions through which people express and share their identity.
