  A new stellar library at the near-IR spectral region developed for the
empirical calibration of the Ca II triplet and stellar population synthesis
modeling is presented. The library covers the range 8348-9020 Angstrom at 1.5
Angstrom (FWHM) spectral resolution, and consists of 706 stars spanning a wide
range in atmospheric parameters. We have defined a new set of near-IR indices,
CaT*, CaT and PaT, which mostly overcome the limitations of previous
definitions, the former being specially suited for the measurement of the Ca II
triplet strength corrected for the contamination from Paschen lines. We also
present a comparative study of the new and the previous calcium indices, as
well as the corresponding transformations between the different systems. A
thorough analysis of the sources of index errors and the procedure to calculate
them is given. Finally, index and error measurements for the whole stellar
library are provided together with the final spectra.
