L' ecosistema digitale del CERL per lo studio del libro antico a stampa: dal progetto 15cBOOKTRADE a oggi

Abstract

The project 15CBOOKTRADE, funded by a Consolidator Grant from the European Research Council over the five years of its duration (2014-2109), actively encouraged as part of its aims the consolidation and development of a series of digital tools and of a wide-ranging network of individuals, institutions, and related projects focused on the use of copies of incunabula and of early printed books in general as sources of historical information.

After the formal conclusion of the project, the work of its research team and of the network of researchers and librarians which had been built up over the five years of activity has continued.  Researchers, working either singly or in groups, have focused their attention on exploring specific categories of early printed books: editions of legal and medical texts, illustrated editions, the book collections developed by early individual owners, monastic libraries, illustrated edition censuses, etc. Some of these projects have also extended their investigations beyond the end of 1500 and the so-called incunable period, thus weakening the traditional distinction between incunable and post-incunable printed production. However, the underlying methodology of all the new paths of research which have been opened up is the use of provenance information found in individual copies as historical data, the use of other bibliographical and documentary/archival sources to enrich the material data found in individual copies, the creation of wide-ranging international networks of collaboration which enable the gathering of data which would otherwise be hard to access (something which has proved especially useful since the start of the Covid pandemic), and the deployment of effective digital tools to facilitate the gathering of data and ways of accessing it.

The contribution presents an overview of all these projects and their current status as well as a series of reflections on the benefits and challenges of building a digital ecosystem for research into early printed books, the need for which has recently been supported also by ICCU, as a practical and durable solution.