CERL - Consortium of European Research Libraries

The CERL - Consortium of European Research Libraries – which the Institute is a member of, together with another 213 leading European libraries and institutions – aims to encourage the sharing of resources among research libraries and the dissemination of knowledge on the pre-1830 European printed heritage.

The Consortium was established in 1992 thanks to an initiative spearheaded by numerous European research libraries with the primary goal of creating a database of  books printed in Europe during the era of the manual printing press; in June 1994 it obtained a legal status; since 1997 Heritage of the Printed Book Database (HPB) is available to researchers.

The database is fed by record files provided by the Consortium libraries and institutions; these files are arranged together so as to make them all accessible through a single search. Consultation is currently reserved to CERL member institutions. Over the years, ICCU has provided about 140,300 records to the HPB database referring to the ancient books owned by about 175 of the 800 SBN libraries that catalogue books printed between 1450 and 1830.

Presently, the HPB database is hosted in Göttingen, at the data processing centre (VZG) of the Gemeinsamer Bibliotheksverbund.

Over the years, CERL has launched and supported other projects, such as the CERL Thesaurus, an integrated database that collects authority records from CERL libraries and institutions with: places of printing, publishers and printing presses names of persons  and institutions on material printed between 1450 and 1830.
ICCU contributed to this database with 2,512 EDIT16 authority records sent to CERL in 2003 and in 2009; in the future, ICCU plans further contributions to the Thesaurus in the coming years.

The CERL Portal, which provides an integrated access to databases on manuscripts, printed works, photographsand other materials,  also includes data on manuscripts held in Italian libraries from the  Manus on line database: records provided by ICCU presently amount to 53,000, but more are to be sent in the near future.

In the past, through a cluster system, ICCU could extend its privileges to other 15 institutions, which included:

  • Biblioteca Universitaria Alessandrina – Roma
  • Biblioteca Casanatense – Roma
  • Biblioteca Vallicelliana – Roma
  • Biblioteca Angelica – Roma
  • Biblioteca di Storia Moderna e Contemporaria – Roma
  • Biblioteca Universitaria – Bologna
  • Biblioteca Palatina – Parma
In November 2012 an agreement was signed between CERL and the General Directorate for Libraries, Cultural Institutes and Copyright, through which ICCU and other 47 state libraries became Group Members of the CERL. The full list is available on the CERL website: http://www.cerl.org/membership/list_members.
 
For more information: Paola Lolli