Iniziative del progetto 15cBOOKTRADE e del CERL per la creazione e il riuso collaborativo di risorse digitali (ricerca, divulgazione, formazione)

The ERC-funded 15cBOOKTRADE project (2014-2019) focused on the production, distribution, use, and later survival of books printed in Europe in the 15th century. It run in close collaboration with the Consortium of European Research Libraries (CERL) and its member libraries. The multiple digital resources created or substantially enhanced during the project, especially the databases Material Evidence in Incunabula (MEI) and CERL’s Provenance Digital Archive (PDA), continue to grow and support scholarly research which relies on 15th-century printed books as historical sources, and enables the study of the formation, dispersal, and digital reconstruction of libraries. The exhibitions organized to share the results of the project with the wider public, in Venice and in Buenos Aires, were rich in digital material and videos, which have since been uploaded onto a dedicated website and are used for education and wider dissemination purposes. Other projects followed in 2020 and 2021, funded by the Polonsky Foundation, on incunabula in Italian monastic libraries and the 1481 illustrated edition of Dante. A pattern is by now consolidated which starts with research, high-level international and collaborative cataloguing, scholarly output, and continues with the production of outreach digital resources (websites, maps and videos), to present effectively the effects of the printing revolution.