07/12/2022
We are online!!!
FILOL - Finding the Lost Library is a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions project (2022-2024) based at the University of Copenhagen.
The overarching aim of FILOL is to track down for the first time the dispersed books from Hernando Colón’s “Universal Library”.
In the early 16th century, Hernando Colón (1488-1539) established in Seville the first documentation centre in the Western world, in which he aimed to gather copies of “every book on every subject in every language”. Almost the entirety of his collection was comprised of printed books, and Colón was one of the leading figures in the development of the book market in the early typographic age (1465-1540).
Unlike other Renaissance intellectuals, however, Colón collected not only fine editions but also the products of popular publishing, such as pamphlets, almanacs and other ephemera. Colón’s library was, therefore, the first official repository of the written products of what was considered universal culture, destined in most cases to disappear precisely because of their physical fragility.
After Colón’s death, most of his books were dispersed, and today only about 4,000 volumes from his original collection survive in the Bibiloteca Colombina in Seville. The FILOL project will attempt to describe and locate a significant portion of the Universal Library’s dispersed volumes, making them available in a catalogue hosted in the open-access database "Book of Books".
Based on this background, the main research objectives of the FILOL project are:
1. to identify and locate Colón’s volumes once held in the Colombina and now preserved elsewhere, and to make them freely available through the open-access database Book of Books,
2. to develop an innovative and reliable methodology for tracing manuscripts and printed books dispersed over the centuries via the antiquarian book market,
3. to map the systems of books’ mobility in early modern Europe using Colón’s library as a case study,
4. to assess the typologies of books that from Colón’s library circulated among the 19th-century antiquarian book market, so as to trace the exact mobility patterns of Colón’s dispersed books.
If you would like to collaborate with us by reporting the presence in your repository of a book from the Universal Library, please write to [email protected].
So, let the book hunt begin!📚📚📚