MNAC Library

On 20 April the MNAC Library will be taking part in the 'bookcrossing' event on the occasion of International Book Day. This year there will be a record number of participants, with more than 50 libraries and museum documentation centres all over Spain joining in the initiative. As a novelty, the MNAC Library plans to release a number of books on art-related subjects, not just inside the Palau Nacional but also outside, with the intention of reaching a larger public.
The object of 'bookcrossing' is to find a book, enjoy it and release it anywhere you like. By registering it previously on the web site www.bookcrossing-spain.com you can follow the progress of the specific copy from the moment you release it. 
The idea of 'bookcrossing' in art libraries first arose in 2009, during the Encuentros de Bibliotecas y Centros de Documentación de Arte Contemporáneo at the ARTIUM Museum-Centre in Vitoria-Gasteiz. Every year since then more institutions have joined this initiative whose aim it is to further reading about art and its dissemination.
Video presentation of the 2012 Bookcrossing
http://www.photoshow.com/watch/Jj4VK3yK

The exhibit consists of books, magazines, leaflets and postcards mostly published at the time of the Barcelona International Exhibition of 1929. In them we can find illustrations of the plans for the building and of the construction work and the interior decoration of the Palau Nacional, as well as several pictures of the Oval Hall. 

The first, written by the librarians Maria Luisa Camarero and Yolanda Ruiz, gives a historical overview of how the collection was formed. The account begins with a presentation of the catalogue of the section made up of free-standing bindings ('boards') purchased by the Board of Museums from Alexandre de Riquer in 1909.

The second, by Aitor Quiney, a specialist in artistic bookbinding at the Biblioteca de Catalunya, offers a portrait of Hermenegild alsina i Munné as a designer of bookbindings on the basis of two specimens kept at the library.

Anyone who is interested can consult the magazine in the Library's novelties section. 

A total of 31 museums and institutions will be releasing 2,500 books all over Spain so that whoever picks them up can enjoy them and then release them somewhere else in a different part of the world. The MNAC Library, for its part, will be contributing with the release of books on different subjects to do with art in different parts of the Palau Nacional.

Books that have been released will be identified with labels containing instructions for the reader taking part in the bookcrossing. In addition, the copies will be recorded on the http://www.bookcrossing-spain.com web site, where readers will be able to keep track of each one, indicating where they captured the book and where they released it.

The first bookcrossing took place in 2009 between Spanish museum libraries. The initiative arose in the framework of the Encuentros de Bibliotecas y Centros de Documentación de Arte Contemporáneo at the Museo ARTIUM in Vitoria-Gasteiz. This event, as well as helping in the effort to encourage reading, is also intended to spread understanding of artistic disciplines.

The object is to get technical support for the computerisation and methodological changes needed for making the Library's collections available to the scientific community and to society and to ensure the technology is maintained and kept up to date within a specialised consortium.

As a result, this October the Library's catalogue joined the Catàleg Col•lectiu de les Universitats de Catalunya (CCUC, http://ccuc.cbuc.cat). The addition amounts to 145,009 records, of which 112,074 didn't exist in the CCUC.

From now on, the Library will work in partnership with the CCUC, sharing information and models when it comes to cataloguing the material. We are entering a cooperative terrain which is unlike anything we had seen before now.

Since the beginning of September, the Library's work of cataloguing its collections has been interrupted, except for entering the new numbers of periodical publications. This is because of the workload produced by the imminent change in the library management system and entry into the CCUC.

This interruption means that book novelties are not being updated either on the Library display or on the web site.

At the end of October entry of new material will be resumed using the new Millennium system

Last 14 May the MNAC signed the agreement with the Consortium of Catalan University Libraries for the Library's entry into the Catalan Universities Collective Catalogue (CCUC, Catàleg Col·lectiu de les Universitats de Catalunya).

The moment marked the start of steps to change the library management system from VTLS to Millennium.

As regards consulting the catalogue, changes will come into effect at the end of October, at which moment the new system will be operative and it will be possible to consult our collection in the CCUC.

The new opening hours are:

Monday to Friday, from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m.
August: Monday to Friday, from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m.

The Naples Bible (MS. fr. 9561) was commissioned by Robert the Wise towards the end of his reign and completed at the beginning of the 1350s during the reign of his granddaughter Joanna. This is a de-luxe commission, a work of great pictorial value, in which each folio is painted on one side only.

In a single volume this Bible features two juxtaposed forms of illustration. The first 128 miniatures belong to the Moralised Bible genre. Except for the full-page frontispiece on folio 1, the miniatures in the Old Testament section are framed in a border of plant motifs and divided into two registers, an upper one containing the biblical scenes and the lower one containing the moralisation. The 76 full-page paintings of New Testament scenes are in marked contrast to the preceding series and present a new figurative and spiritual realm inspired by Giotto. Each miniature, painted on a gold-leaf background, illustrates a single topic, so that the canon of the characters is much larger than in the moralised part.

This facsimile edition by Moleiro Editor S.A. joins the Library's facsimile collection consisting of 690 items.

Rosa Reixats, a qualified librarian and history graduate, left her job at the Biblioteca de l’Arxiu Històric de la Ciutat de Barcelona in 1986 to take on the post of Director of the Biblioteca dels Museus d’Art. At that time preparations were under way for moving the library, housed in the former arsenal building in La Ciutadella, to the Casa de la Caritat.

In the course of her career, amongst other events Rosa Reixats has been involved in there have been three moves, one transfer between institutions, the centenary celebrations and four different names for the Library.

Rosa Reixats is retiring after taking part in the definitive move of the Library to the Palau Nacional on Montjuïc (the final step in its integration in the MNAC), the computerisation of the Library's collections and other forward-looking projects that are being continued today.

The archives contain documents relating to Cirlot's work procedure, including correspondence, bibliography commented, annotated and worked on by the author, and press cuttings. The collection also includes originals of his poems, aesthetic theory and visual poems, offprints and publications by the author, Cirlot's correspondence with various contemporary artists, black and white photographs of these artists' works, leaflets of their exhibitions, press cuttings and other publications.
The documents that have been preserved date from the years 1958 to 1973 (the writer destroyed the documents from before 1958) and provide valuable information about the figure and the working procedure of one of our country's most prominent intellectuals from the end of the war until his death at the beginning of the 1970s.
The Library has received a total of 84 books, 99 small catalogues and 24 periodical publications.

In the course of the year the Library's exchanges section has acquired a total of 1,122 documents, of which the most remarkable are the eleven facsimiles exchanged with the BNE. The acquisition is valued at 16,645 euros and consists of the following titles: Liber chronicarum, Libro de horas de los retablos, De aetatibus mundi imagines, Libro de horas de los 7 pecados capitales, Miracoli della Vergine Maria, Retratos o tablas de las historias del Testamento Viejo, Llibre d’hores en llatí i francès il·luminat per a el Condottiero Ferrante d’Este, Libro de horas de Leonor de la Vega, Libro de horas de Carlos V, Ceremonial de la coronación unción y exequias de los Reyes de Inglaterra.

In addition, Edicions 62 has donated a copy of Ramon Llull's Llibre de meravelles, with a prologue and selection of texts by Pere Gimferrer and a steel case by Jaume Plensa, published this year in Barcelona. This is a bibliophile edition, exemplar HC 13/19.

The Llibre de meravelles and a selection of the facsimiles will be exhibited until the first week of December in the display cases in the Library vestibule.

When the Library webpage was posted, consultation of the material had
to be done via the Catàleg Col·lectiu de Catalunya, which has various
centres. We now have the possibility of consulting the actual
catalogue, viewing correctly and completely each of the entries it
includes.

The first phase of the project is intended to physically unify the
artists’ folders from both sections. The idea is to create a single
folder for each artist that will contain not only news items or small
catalogues, but also any type of material, as long as it is not
monographs or magazines.
There will be a single place for the
material and each folder will be entered in the catalogue. This will
allow users to consult this material without having to travel to the
Museum.

At the end of last June, the Library finished the conversion of the
manual catalogue of monographs (52,093 entries), including large-format
(200 entries) and the books in the reserve (1,357 entries). At the same
time, the Gabinet Numismàtic de Catalunya’s Library was re-catalogued
(4,069 entries), which includes books, offprints and leaflets.
In
this way, some of the aims established in the prolongation of the
agreement signed with Fundación Telefónica have been achieved,
continued with the conversion of the manual catalogue of magazines from
September 1st 2008.
Apart from the conversion work, during the
last three months the 209 monographs from the acquisition of Puig i
Cadafalch’s library have been catalogued.

On July 2nd, the figures were as follows:

Total number of entries: 118,550
Exclusive entries MNAC: 85,522
Exclusive entries MACBA: 33,024
Shared entries MACBA-MNAC: 9,474
Cuttings (analytical of content): 3,167 cuttings from a total of 249 publications

The MNAC Library is making progress in the process of re-cataloguing
and automating the retrospective catalogue of the collections. On May
6th 2008 Francisco Serrano, Director General of Fundación Telefónica,
and Narcís Serra, President of the Board of Trustees of the Museu
Nacional d’Art de Catalunya, signed the prolongation of the agreement.
In this phase, due to finalize on March 1st 2010, the material in the
Gabinet Numismàtic’s Library, the material in the reserve and
large-format and the important collection of periodical publications
will be incorporated into the catalogue.

On February 11th, the Library completed the automation of 50,450
bibliographic entries, achieving the objectives established in the
sponsorship agreement signed between the Museum and Fundación
Telefónica at the end of 2005.

Since the project got underway,
the team with the job of carrying it out has transcribed the data from
the manual catalogue files and has increased and normalized the points
of access to the Library’s material.

The automation and
re-cataloguing work has made it possible to make an overall assessment
of the material: the documents have been reviewed and the specific
physical characteristics have been added (particularly to those
published between 1850 and 1900), the collection of leaflets has been
grouped together in almost 60 boxes and an important part of the
material has been cleaned, relabelled and bound.

In order to
verify the descriptive levels of the material, the databases of
important European and American libraries have been studied. Among the
institutions consulted are the National Art Library, the Bibliothèque
Nationale de France, the Library of Congress, and others closer to home
like the Biblioteca Nacional de España, the Museu d’Art Contemporani de
Barcelona and the Catàleg Col•lectiu de les Universitats Catalanes.

,
The Library will shortly be signing the prolongation of the agreement
with Fundación Telefónica, with the aim of completing the automation of
all the material, re-cataloguing the reserve material and the
periodical publications. It is hoped to achieve this by March 1st 2010.


Today, February 18th 2008, we can give the following figures:

- Total number of entries on the database: approximately 111,000. (the database grows at a rate of 100-120 entries daily)
- Exclusive entries MACBA: 27,467
- Exclusive entries MNAC: 69,907 (of which 2,702 belong to cuttings of articles from conferences and magazines)

On September 1st 2007, the press archive entered a new phase with the
passage of the manual archive to the selection, presentation and
recovery of the information through digital resources.

The
Library’s manual press archive contains about 15,000 thematic dossiers
with news items of artistic interest that have appeared in the
country’s press during the period from the beginning of the 20th
century to the present day.

Over the years, there has been an
exhaustive process of taking cuttings from the newspapers and magazines
delivered to the museum, from which all the information was taken
referring to art, exhibitions, artists, museums, auctions, patrimonies,
etc., and to the history of Barcelona, with the aim of offering users
detailed information that is often difficult to find in other sources.

News
items appearing after September 1st can now be consulted via Internet
from the Library reading room and the previous ones continue to make up
the archive on paper.