Marie Curie Fellowship, Consortium of European Research Libraries, London (2016-2018)

Laura Carnelos

My academic career has been devoted to research on different aspects of Italian socio-cultural history, especially the history of so-called popular editions from the sixteenth to nineteenth centuries. I am specialized in Library and Archival Studies (MA and BA degrees) with a PhD in Socio-Cultural History of Early Modern Italy. I have worked as a librarian at the Peggy Guggenheim Foundation (Venice), the Museum Correr (Venice) and the European University Institute (Florence). I have been granted post-doc fellowships at the University of Venice, Centro di Alti Studi in Forlì and Giorgio Cini Foundation in Venice and I have teaching experience to undergraduate students (University of Verona). In my studies, I have explored and engaged extensively with various aspects of Italian culture and history, resulting in my two monographs I libri da risma. Catalogo delle edizioni Remondini a larga diffusione (1650-1850), Milan, FrancoAngeli, 2008, and ‘Con libri alla mano’, Editoria di larga diffusione a Venezia tra ’600 e ’700, Milan, Unicopli, 2012), based respectively on the work done for my Master’s and PhD theses; in two works edited by me: I pirati dei libri. Stampa e contraffazione a Venezia tra Sei e Settecento, Venice, Marsilio, 2012 and Stampe private. La circolazione delle opere di Giammaria Ortes nel carteggio della Biblioteca Correr, Venice, Fondazione Cini, 2015; and in several scholarly articles. A forthcoming monograph ‘From Cheap Print to Rare Ephemera: 16th-century Italian ‘popular’ books at the British Library’ (provisional title) is now being drafted.

THE PATRIMONiT PROJECT
http://data.cerl.org/patrimonit/_search

Final Report

Since February 2016, I have been working on a British-Italian Marie S. Curie Individual Fellowship project entitled ‘PATRIMONiT. From Cheap Print to Rare Ephemera: 16th-Century Italian 'Popular' Books at the British Library’, under the supervision of Dr Cristina Dondi and based at the Consortium of European Research Libraries (CERL), London. The project financed by the European Commission (H2020-MSCA-IF-2014, grant agreement No 659625) also involves the British Library (BL), in the person of Stephen Parkin, and the National Italian Cataloguing Agency (ICCU), in the person of the director of EDIT16, the Italian National database of all books printed in Italy between 1501-1600 and of books containing Italian texts printed elsewhere. With this project, I am re-evaluating the concept of ‘ephemeral publication’, setting up new parametres in our way of studying them, on the basis of their material evidence and the use of archival sources, and for the description and cataloguing of ‘popular’ books. This research uses new technologies and methods for studying rare books and the socio-cultural contexts of their production, circulation, and use. Besides connections to the fields of Library Science and Information and Communication Technologies, my project is also located within a multi- and interdisciplinary network which includes several areas of knowledge, such as History of the Book, the History of Libraries and of Collecting, Cultural and Social History, and European and Economic History. With my current Marie S. Curie project, I am in the process of demonstrating that 16th-century Italian popular books became a fashionable category of collectible artefacts in 18th- and 19th-century England while the new acquisition policies enacted by Sir Anthony Panizzi, who worked in the British Museum Library from 1831 to 1866, becoming Keeper of Printed Books and later Principal Librarian, are responsible for the remarkable presence of this kind of material in the Library’s collections today.

I am working mainly on editions which do not survive in any Italian library and which are now included in EDIT16 (http://edit16.iccu.sbn.it/), the Italian National database of all books printed in Italy between 1501-1600 and of books in Italian printed elsewhere. Thanks to PATRIMONiT, only some months ago, an agreement has been signed between the BL and ICCU. With this agreement, the BL is the first foreign library to be listed in EDIT16 as a holding library for all those 16th-century Italian editions of which the BL holds a copy. Now more than 8,800 books are recorded for the BL (location: UK0001) and of these more than 500 are unique copies.

PAPERS on the PATRIMONiT project:
• 23 February 2018: ‘From Ephemeral to Rare: 16th-Century Italian Popular Books in the British and the Bodleian Libraries’, Seminar in the History of the Book, Oxford, Weston Library, Visiting Scholars’ Centre (VSC) – Convenor: Cristina Dondi.
• 13-14 December 2017: ‘PATRIMONiT: Cinquecentine italiane in British Library, da libri popolari a oggetti da preservare’, Internetional Conference ‘L’editoria popolare in Italia fra XVI e XVII sec.’, Rome, University of Roma Tre and Marco Besso Foundation.
• 28 November 2017: ‘The study of rare popular books through PATRIMONiT: a combined methodological approach’, International Conference ‘New Sources for Book History: Combined Methodological Approaches for Manuscripts and Printed Books’, British Library, London.
• 14-15 June 2017: ‘Sacre Rappresentazioni in the British Library: the History of a Collection’, International Conference ‘Crossing Borders, Crossing Cultures: Popular Print in Europe (1450-1900), Bruno Kessler Foundation, Trent (invited).
• 23 February 2017: ‘PATRIMONiT: Stampati di larga circolazione e storia degli esemplari’, Seminar for PhD students in Book History and Library Science, University La Sapienza, Rome (invited).
• 24-24 November 2016: ‘The PATRIMONiT database’, Workshop on popular books databases, Lincoln College, Oxford (invited).
• 27-28 October 2016: ‘PATRIMONiT: de libro popular a objeto de colección’, X Encuentro de Historiadores de la Prensa y del Periodismo, Valencia (invited).
• 25 April 2016: ‘PATRIMONiT. From Cheap Print to Rare Ephemera: 16th-Century Italian 'Popular' Books at the British Library’, Workshop: ‘EDPOP: European Dimensions of Popular Print Culture’, University of Utrecht, Utrecht (invited).

Sacre Rappresentazioni at the British Library (C. 34.h.26 – C.34.h. 24 – C.34.h.28)

Follow the updates of PATRIMONiT in the CERL NEWSLETTER: June 2015, June 2016, December 2016 and June 2017

Contact details: Laura Carnelos (lcarnelos81@gmail.com)
Website: https://cerl.academia.edu/LauraCarnelos

This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under the Marie Skolodowska-Curie grant agreement No 659625.