Exposicion de la Bula
Dr Alexander Wilkinson (Centre for the History of the Media, UCD School of History and Archives) was recently awarded an Andrew W Mellon Foundation grant under its Scholarly Communications and Information Technology Programme. The grant, the first awarded by the Foundation to UCD, will support Dr Wilkinson’s IB17: The Iberian Book Project (1601-1650).
The Iberian Book Project 1601-1650 (IB17) is a three-year research project based at the Centre for the History of the Media at UCD. It will undertake an initial global survey of books published in Spain and Portugal or in Spanish or Portuguese between 1601 and 1650, and provide for the foundation of a national short-title catalogue. IB17 will be made available as a free online resource and will offer a portal for digital reproductions of Iberian works which are freely or commercially available. Provisional indications suggest that the total corpus of works will be around 40,000-45,000 items surviving in over 200,000 copies worldwide. No equivalent resource exists at present.
IB17 represents the second and most substantial part of an initiative which strives to understand how the production and consumption of print evolved on the Peninsula during the Golden Age. The first stage of the project - IB16 - covered the period before 1601 and is now complete.
Dr Wilkinson said: “Even though it will need to continue to evolve and develop IB17 will, even after three years, offer a powerful aid to scholars interested in the history, literature and culture of early modern Spain and Portugal. It is difficult to overstate the very substantial barrier to research that exists at present, with scholars forced to confront information fragmented across various published and online catalogues and bibliographies. IB17 will aid conservation of what is a truly global printed heritage. In particular it will make libraries aware when theirs is the only known surviving copy of a book or pamphlet, and thus a priority for conservation filming. At a glance, libraries and commercial publishers will also be able to see whether other items have already been digitised elsewhere. It is very much hoped that the project will encourage greater global strategic thinking in the preservation and dissemination of early printed books.”
Dr Wilkinson has considerable experience with managing large bibliographical projects. He has held doctoral and postdoctoral scholarships from the Carnegie Trust, the British Academy and the Arts and Humanities Research Council. He is a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society and founding editor of Palgrave Studies in the History of the Media. He is also one of the series editors of the St Andrews Studies in French History and Culture Series. From 2001-2006, he managed and was a co-author of French Vernacular Books (Brill, 2007) funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council before taking up the post as Director of the Centre for the History of the Media at UCD in 2006. Between 2006 and 2009 he compiled IB16 which was published by Brill in May 2010. An online version of this catalogue will be made available free of charge in 2012. A special edition of the Bulletin of Spanish Studies will be guest-edited in 2012 by Dr Wilkinson, containing articles which make use of information contained in IB.
UCD has a long tradition of excellence and collaboration in early-modern history, Hispanic and Lusophone Studies and Information and Library Studies. With the presence of figures such as the late Professor Albert Lovett and the now retired Professor Don Cruickshank, UCD boasts the best holdings in Ireland on Peninsula history and in Spanish bibliographical studies.
For more information, please visit www.ucd.ie/ibp.
