Project details
- Project officer/PI: Dr Laura Carnelos
- Duration: 2016 - 2018
- Funding Body: Marie Skłodowska-Curie Fellowship
This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under the Marie Skołodowska-Curie grant agreement No 659625.
Project overview
PATRIMONiT was a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Individual Fellowship project led by Dr Laura Carnelos of University of Venice Ca’ Foscari and conducted at the Consortium of European Research Libraries in collaboration with The British Library and the Istituto Centrale per il catalogo unico, home of EDIT16. Funded by the European Commission under the Horizon 2020 programme, the project investigated the fate of 16th-century Italian “popular” books, inexpensive printed works widely used in the Early Modern period. The dispersal of Italian book collections in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries led many of these fragile publications to Great Britain. The research surveyed editions preserved at the British Library that no longer survive in Italy, improved cataloguing practices, created a database modelled on CERL’s Material Evidence in Incunabula, and integrated data into EDIT16 and the CERL Thesaurus. Archival sources and book trade documentation helped reconstruct patterns of circulation and survival.
The project demonstrated the importance of ephemeral print for reconstructing sociocultural history. It clarified how “popular” books shifted from everyday utilitarian objects to items seen as disposable yet collectible, and showed how politics, cultural policies, and collecting practices shaped this transformation. By reassessing the concept of ephemeral publication, PATRIMONiT produced guidelines for cataloguing and studying these materials through material evidence and archival research, highlighting the value of interdisciplinary approaches to Europe’s printed heritage.
