Archaeology of a Book: An experimental approach to reading rare books in archival contextsMain MenuIntroductionReading the First Books is an exploration of America's earliest printed booksPath: ProductionThis path explores the narratives of production embedded in the material qualities of the Advertencias.Path: CollectionPath describes the collection of early printed books in religious libraries across Mexico. 16-18th centuries.Path: AcquisitionPath describes the dispersal of early printed books in libraries and private collections beyond Mexican borders.Path: (Digital) FuturesBook history in a digital futureReferencesReferences, citations, and further readingTermsIndex of termsAuthorship & AcknowledgementsHannah Alpert-Abrams9dd7500ea284b1882c8042744db689b17f2c2255LLILAS Benson Latin American Studies and Collection
Entrar la Biblioteca Franciscana
12015-11-29T21:35:25-08:00Hannah Alpert-Abrams9dd7500ea284b1882c8042744db689b17f2c225543582Entrance to the Biblioteca Franciscana in Cholula, Mexicoplain2015-11-29T21:35:48-08:00Hannah Alpert-AbramsHannah Alpert-Abrams9dd7500ea284b1882c8042744db689b17f2c2255
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12015-12-12T15:59:28-08:00Hannah Alpert-Abrams9dd7500ea284b1882c8042744db689b17f2c2255Media GalleryHannah Alpert-Abrams4Media from the "Archaeology of the Book" projectstructured_gallery1229762015-12-12T16:03:09-08:00Hannah Alpert-Abrams9dd7500ea284b1882c8042744db689b17f2c2255
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1media/DSCF2117.JPG2015-11-29T17:20:50-08:00Looking Forward: Library Collections6Collecting the Advertencias in the future, from new libraries to digital collectionsplain2015-11-29T21:39:33-08:00This project has shown how we can understand the cultural and intellectual lives of the people who wrote, printed, purchased, and displayed historical books by studying the history of their provenance. In this final section we turn our attention to the future, looking at modern collections of books from New Spain that offer new ways of thinking about and accessing these historical documents.
The Biblioteca Franciscana
The Biblioteca Franciscana, located in Cholula, Mexico, was established in 1990 to reunite the historical libraries of the Franciscans in New Spain. Established by the Universidad de las Americas (Puebla), its mission is to preserve the bibliographic legacy of the order of San Francisco. Today, it holds more than 24,000 volumes from the colonial period, including sermons, theological treatises, canonical law, catechisms, hagiographies, and liturgies, as well as works of history, science, mathematics, philosophy, literature, grammar, and rhetoric. Collectively, these works demonstrate the breadth of Franciscan intellectual life and textual productivity.
The books at the Franciscana are catalogued according to their provenance, focusing on six collections pertaining to convents in Puebla, Mexico City, and Veracruz. This organizational structure turns the historical library into an organizing principal, drawing attention to the value of the library as an object of study (something that has been highlighted in this project as well). At the Franciscana we can explore not just the books, but also the history of their use.
The Franciscana is located in a restored Franciscan convent built in the sixteenth century. To enter the library, in the words of Elvia Morales and Rocío Cázares, "era situarse en en otra época, traspasar un velo y llegar a un lugar donde el tiempo se había detenido." María Clara de Greiff and Francisco Mejía use similar words to describe their experience of the library: "Decidí entonces aventurarme en el tiempo, en la historia. Atravesé la portería y transité en la historia del rescate y resguardo del patrimonio bibliográfico franciscano" (77). The affective experience of entering a historical moment through the books - and libraries - of the past is at the heart of the Franciscana's mission as a new kind of historical library.
Online Collections
The Primeros Libros
conditions of digitization that produced the online Advertencias repository. The Primeros Libros project was established in 2010 as a partnership between five institutions: the Biblioteca Palafoxiana (Puebla, MX), the Biblioteca Lafragua (Puebla, MX), the Biblioteca Franciscana (Cholula, MX), the Benson Latin American Collection (Austin, TX, USA), and the Cushing Library (College Station, TX, USA). In its initial phase, the goal was to create digital facsimiles of fifty-eight books held by the partner institutions. The collection currently has 384 books in various stages of processing from 23 institutions around the world.