The BDO project

The BDO holds the results of a series of research projects under the same title, funded by the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness, being developed at the University of Santiago de Compostela from 2007.

As a long-term research project, the BDO is being completed in several consecutive phases. The first three phases (BDO I, BDO II, and BDO III) have already been completed. The first phase, BDO I, began in 2007 and was completed in 2010, covering works held in libraries in Galicia and Catalonia that were printed between the 15th and the 19th centuries (‘Biblioteca Digital Ovidiana: ediciones ilustradas de Ovidio, siglos XV-XIX (I): las bibliotecas de Galicia y Cataluña’ (HUM2007- 60265/ARTE)).

BDO II was completed in 2012, and includes works from additional libraries in Catalonia (‘Biblioteca Digital Ovidiana: ediciones ilustradas de Ovidio, siglos XV-XIX (II): las bibliotecas de Cataluña’ (HAR2010-20015)). The third phase, BDO III, was completed in 2014 and includes the libraries of the autonomous community of Castile and León (‘Biblioteca Digital Ovidiana: ediciones ilustradas de Ovidio, siglos XV-XIX (III): las bibliotecas de Castilla y León’ (HAR2011-25853)).

The fourth phase, BDO IV, is currently ongoing and planned to be completed at the end of 2017. The scope of this phase is researching Ovidian editions from the libraries of the autonomous community of Madrid (‘Biblioteca Digital Ovidiana: ediciones ilustradas de Ovidio, siglos XV-XIX (III): las bibliotecas de la Comunidad de Madrid’ (HAR2014-55617-P)).

To achieve these results, several tasks are performed in each phase of the project:

• tracing the copies of editions of Ovidian works and individuating the illustrated specimens at the selected libraries .
• digitizing the title page and every illustration (woodcuts and etchings) of each specimen
• Elaboración de las creating a BDO biblio-iconographic record for each illustrated specimen.
• processing the resulting information and data (the record and images)
• incorporating data to the online database and displaying them at BDO Website.

Apart from this unique method of approaching the study of illustrated books, the BDO’s primary contributions are two innovations conceived to better describe, organize and establish a knowledgeable hierarchy of the data provided by close study of these specimens:

• an identification system (code) for the editions
• a customized record format designed to display all information (bibliographic and iconographic) related to each located and examined specimen

The edition code constitutes a brief but descriptive summary of a specific edition, providing the following relevant information: work (Metamorphoses, Heroides, Tristia, etc.)/ editor/printer/place of publication/date. As an example, the Metamorphoses edition by Raphael Regius printed in Venice in 1493 by Simone Bevilacqua is described as: M.Regius.Bevilacqua.Venecia.1493.

The information provided by this code unambiguously identifies each edition. So being a complete description of each Ovidian illustrated edition, the code has become the effective ‘name’ identifying the edition, under which all related specimens are listed.

Another innovation of the BDO is a tailored record format, in the form of a table, which inventories the bibliographic and iconographic information for each specimen and edition. This ‘biblio-iconographic’ record describes the following information:

Project Team

Equipo investigador:

• Dra. Fátima Díez Platas. University of Santiago de Compostela (Project Leader).
• Dra. Paloma Centenera Centenera. International University of La Rioja (UNIR).
• Dra. María Luisa Díez Platas. LINHD-National Distance Education University (UNED)
• Patricia Meilán Jácome. University of Santiago de Compostela
• Brianda Otero Moreira. University of Santiago de Compostela
• Nerea Senra Alonso. University of Santiago de Compostela
• Nair Castiñeiras López. University of Santiago de Compostela

Former team members and scientific collaborators:

• Dr. Manuel A. Castiñeiras González. Autonomous University of Barcelona.
• Dña. Estíbaliz García Gómez. University of Santiago de Compostela.
• Dr. Joaquín García Nistal. University of León.
• D. Apolinar García Paredes. University of Salamanca.
• Dña. Cristina López Gómez. University of Santiago de Compostela.
• Dr. José Morais Morán. University of Extremadura.
• Dña. Marta Paz Fernández. University of Santiago de Compostela.
• Dña. María del Carmen Rodríguez Lemos.University of Santiago de Compostela .
• Dra. Henar Velasco López. University of Salamanca.