PRESENTATION | Early Printed Books and U.S. Heritage Collections

Printing Revolution and American Collections: The Migration of Cultural Heritage in Times of Political Change (PrintRevUS)

Books, Writings, and People of Hernando Colón’s Universal Library: European Culture and Intellectual Production at the Dawn of the Global World (Colibri)

This event presents two major international research projects developed in collaboration with heritage libraries in the United States.

PrintRevUS (2024–28) is a four-year project led by Prof. Cristina Dondi at Sapienza University of Rome.

Incunabula held in American libraries are at the core of the investigation. The project’s objectives include reconstructing their early European provenance; examining the intended and unintended, direct and indirect consequences of historical policies and events on European book heritage that migrated to the United States; and analyzing the formation of U.S. collections.

Six researchers based in Rome work on provenance images supplied by U.S.-based consultants (for large collections) and directly by libraries (for smaller collections). They investigate provenance and create records in the international database Material Evidence in Incunabula (MEI), with links to images uploaded to CERL’s Provenance Digital Archive (PDA).