The research has been conducted on 256 16th-century books in the British Library, mainly part of the collection of sacre rappresentazioni of the library, which is one of the biggest collections of these books outside Italy. In addition, for a comparison, 74 similar books have been analysed at the Bodleian Library in Oxford. Of a total of 330 records now in PATRIMONiT, 81 (68 unique copies, 8 unique variants, 5 books surviving only abroad) are the books which do not survive in any Italian libraries, that is 24.5% of the total!
The analysis ‘book in hand’ of the books has been integrated with systematic study of archival material of the BL, which is now partially at the British Museum and partially in the British Library.
OBJECTIVE A: To create the PATRIMONiT database and to enter the data in EDIT16
Part of the PATRIMONIT project has involved the creation of a database, PATRIMONiT, that was constructed using international standards for describing the specific material, textual and visual characteristics of popular books and their provenance history. Developed by Alexander Jahnke of Data Conversion Group (University of Göttingen), the PATRIMONiT database has been realised in accordance with CERL’s criteria of transferability and re-usability of bibliographical data. This means that it is an open access database with fields specifically created for the study of popular books, the data from which can be intelligently retrieved, combined and manipulated, as well as transferred into digital and other research contexts, so becoming useful for other research projects.
PATRIMONiT is operational from December 2016 and is available on line, hosted and maintained by CERL, and freely available on its website [http://data.cerl.org/patrimonit/_search]. All the preliminary operations have been supervised by Dr Cristina Dondi who is the creator of MEI (Material Evidence in Incunabula), which is used as a model, and supervisor of the current project.
OBJECTIVE B: To study the history of the Italian editions in the British Library using archival sources
The PATRIMONiT project demonstrated that British collectors were keen on buying Italian popular books of the 16th century especially from the second half of the 18th century onwards, when in Italy the same material was often neglected. The main bibliophiles in the UK, such as William Roscoe (1753-1831), John Towneley (1731-1813), Richard Heber (1773-1833), possessed in their libraries volumes of Italian 16th-century popular books. When they died, this material tended to be dispersed at auction sales. Due to changes in the scope of acquisition and preservation policies led by Antonio Panizzi, who worked in the British Museum Library from 1831 to 1866, becoming Keeper of Printed Books and later Principal Librarian, the British Museum turned into a potential buyer. Official reports, letters and minutes confirmed that many collections sold in France, Italy, Belgium, Germany, England were bought by the British Museum Library mainly during the first 70 years of the 19th century. The analysis of similar material at the Bodleian Library has highlighted the participation also of this library to the main sales of 16th- century Italian popular books in the country, with an increase in the second half of the 19th century, probably due to a higher purchase grant in this period.
