Video

Speaker(s): Ilaria Andreoli,Ilenia Maschietto

Related events: New sources for book history – International Conference

Releated Working Group(s):

Collection: CERl conferences

Recorded: November 28, 2017

Abstract:

laria Andreoli (CNRS-ITEM, Paris; Fondazione Giorgio Cini, Venice), Ilenia Maschietto (Giorgio Cini Foundation, Venice),

The Essling project: the census and the copies Victor Masséna, prince of Essling (1836-1910) was a great collector as well as the unsurpassed historian of the Venetian early-modern illustrated book. He produced his massive and still fundamental Livres à figures vénitiens de la fin du XVe siècle et du commencement du XVIe (1907-1914), based on a census of illustrated editions studied from copies in his own collection, precisely identified, but also from copies that he personally consulted in other libraries or whose descriptions were sent to him by the keepers of the most important public and private collections in Europe.

Mostly, his method was ground-breaking as he proposed bibliographical descriptions organized according to a “genealogical” model that identified, after the first illustrated edition, all successive editions of the same title until the end of the first half of the 16thth century. This allows scholars not only to build “tree views” that illustrate the iconographic evolution of a given title, but also to confront contemporary editions unified by common stylistic features. The Venetian nucleus of the Essling library is now part of the Fondazione Giorgio Cini. The unique character of the Essling collection made us wonder whether it would be possible to create a digital tool that would allow easy navigation among the editions described and would link the Essling descriptions with major reference tools.

We thus contacted Regesta.exe, a service provider for Cini digital archives, with whom we plan to publish the data in open and shared format with controlled vocabulary and formal ontologies in accordance with the RDF standard and Linked Open Data technology. Furthermore, the Essling copies now at Fondazione Cini will link with other digital records to better knowledge of our copies, described in MEI and in the Archivio Possessori project, based on Biblioteca Marciana.

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