Speaker
Laura Moré (University of Girona)
Abstract
2017 was designated by the Catalan Government Bertrana Year in order to commemorate respectively the 150th and 125th anniversary of the birth of the Catalan writers Prudenci and Aurora Bertrana. Since 1997 the Library of the University of Girona holds a special collection consisting of both authors’ personal library and archive. As this is one of our first special collections and both authors were born in Girona, all the library staff were engaged to participate in the commemorating acts.
As we had detected a gap in the study of their journalistic works, we decided to start the project of compiling all their articles for the first time in a database. In order to do it, in the first place, we planned to search for article references in academic publications and some of the author’s books. In a second stage, as we knew there were several journals where they regularly published, we assigned a journal to each staff for them to browse the digitized version of them. These digitized versions were available at other institutions’ websites or in collaborative project websites.
The database was filled with the article reference information and, when available, the URL to the article digitized version.
We finally designed a web interface that allows researchers to search through database information and sort results by several criteria.
Nowadays, Bertrana de Capçalera is still an open project that keeps growing with new references and links. 2,197 articles by Prudenci Bertrana and 174 articles by his daughter, Aurora, are currently indexed in the database, most of them with a link to the full text.
The project aimed to fill in an existing gap, contribute to promote both authors¿ work and promote the special collection that our library holds. Since 2017, several international academic works and publications, some of them during the pandemic, were based upon the information of Bertrana de Capçalera.