Government of the Republic of Trinidad and Tobago

Library Services Unit - Collections

The collections of the three branch libraries range in subject from:

  • Environmental matters
  
  • Intellectual property issues
  • Estimates of Expenditure
  
  • Land Planning
  • Financial planning
  
  • Personnel/Human Resource Management
  • Housing
  
  • Periodicals
  • Vertical / Information File Collection – of brochures and newspaper clippings on matters related to planning, housing and the environment as well as finance.
  • Databases: databases of general subjects, including books, periodical articles, loans, acts / bills/ legal notices

South Quay Library -

Local /Regional / International collection:

This collection focuses mostly on housing, land, settlements, and squatting locally, regionally and internationally. This collection also focuses on various governmental and private sector approaches to the issue of housing, problems encountered and policies created and implemented and includes UN-HABITAT publications and the Digital Library on Human Settlements and Urbanization.

Vertical / Information File Collection:

Brochures and newspaper clippings on matters related to the housing aspect of the Ministry and housing in general e.g. home construction, land and housing settlement, land use, squatting, and slums.

Scope: 1962 – to date

The Review of Shelter and Land Development Policy Study (PADCO reports):

The PADCO reports is a series generated by The Planning and Development Collaborative International, Inc. and Laughlin and Associates Limited (who were contracted by the Government of Trinidad and Tobago in 1993).

Subject foci:

  • Basic conditions within the land and housing sectors
  • Policies aimed at improving the delivery of land and shelter services to low income households with a minimum of subsidy
  • Policies to stimulate domestic and foreign investment in the housing sector.

These are available in full-text (pdf)

Conference/Symposium/Seminar papers:

Includes proceedings/papers from conferences, seminars and symposiums hosted by the Ministry or its agencies

  • Seminar on Shelter for all - towards a viable settlement: - “The Indian Experience” in 1997
  • Housing 2006 Colloquium on Achieving Housing Sustainability in Small Island Developing States: Opportunities and Challenges
  • Squatter Management Symposium in 2008 (hosted by the Land Settlement Agency) which focused on Managing Squatter Settlements in Trinidad and Tobago: Towards Sustainable Development.

Twin Towers Library -

  • Audio-visual Collection – This collection includes compact disks (CDs) and digital video disks (DVDs).
  • Caribbean collection of resources – A collection of documents whose focus is on the Caribbean community and/ or authors from the Caribbean.
  • Environment Collection – Any document that pertains to the environment or issues related to the environment whether on an International, Caribbean or domestic (Trinidad & Tobago) level.
  • Eric E. Williams Speeches (special collection) – This is a special collection of the former Prime Minister’s speeches which will be available in full-text format.
  • Hispanic Collection (special collection) – to encourage staff to learn – The library’s collection of Spanish material (books, dictionaries, cds) to help facilitate the Cabinet’s initiative for Spanish as our second language.
  • International collection of resources – on general subjects – This collection houses documents that are not Trinidad and Tobago or Caribbean collection.
  • Loan Agreements (special collection) – A restricted collection of loan agreements between the Trinidad and Tobago government and other international financial institutions, such as the IDB, IMF.
  • Trinidad and Tobago collections of resources – A collection of documents whose focus point is Trinidad & Tobago and/or authors from the twin island Republic.
  • Vision 2020 (special collection) – of the print copies of all the sector, annual and operational plans of the Secretariat.