About the Hispanic, Portuguese, and Caribbean Collections
A Brief Introduction by John R. Hébert
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Brief Researcher's Guide
Introduction
The Library of Congress is an extraordinary resource for substantive primary
research in virtually any field or area of Hispanic and Portuguese studies
(commonly referred to as Luso-Hispanic studies after the Latin names for
both entities of the Iberian Peninsula, i.e., Portugal was Lusitania and
Spain was Hispania), encompassing Latin America, the Caribbean, Hispanics
and Portuguese in the United States, the Iberian Peninsula, and other places
where Iberian culture dominated and has survived. Within its total Hispanic
and Portuguese collections of ten million items are an estimated one million
related books and periodicals on Latin America alone and an equal number
for the Iberian Peninsula and the rest of the Luso-Hispanic world. For books,
maps, and for retrospective holdings of government serials (national and
provincial), newspapers, and other periodicals, these are the most extensive
collections in the world. So voluminous and diverse are the Library's Luso-Hispanic
holdings that it is practically impossible to itemize or categorize adequately
significant topical or geographic strengths. Suffice it to say that visiting
Iberian and Latin American scholars consistently report the discovery of
materials in the Library of Congress that are not available in their home
countries.
The Library of Congress's collections reflect admirably on the early wishes
of the Congress of the United States to remain informed about the cultures,
places, things, and societies outside of the territory of the United States
that affect our society, either through direct contact or from afar. At its
inception in 1800 the Library of Congress reflected a world view in its collecting
patterns, even before the acquisition of Thomas Jefferson's personal library
in 1815, following the destruction of the Library by invading British forces.
Over these past two hundred years the Library of Congress's Hispanic and
Portuguese collections have become unparalleled in their content, breadth,
and scope.
These Hispanic and Portuguese collections describe broadly and deeply Native
American cultures; the cultures of the independent states of Latin America
and the Caribbean; the colonial histories of Spain, Portugal, France, and
England in what is now the Caribbean, the United States, and Latin America;
a myriad body of material on the literature, art, law, and politics of the
Iberian Peninsula; and a treasure trove of rare books, manuscripts, and maps
about Spanish and Portuguese exploration, discovery, and expansion globally,
from Lucena's 1488 work on Portuguese exploration and Christopher Columbus's
own 1502 manuscript book of privileges, to contemporary manuscript accounts
of Pedro Alvares Cabral's voyage to Brazil and India in 1500.
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General Overview
The Hispanic and Portuguese collections encompass research materials related
to the societies (histories, cultures, languages) of the Iberian peninsula,
Latin America and the Caribbean, and those areas where Spain and Portugal ruled--Angola
and Mozambique, Damão, Goa, Diu, Philippines, Macao, and parts of the
United
States that were once Spanish territory.
Separate, considerable collections of manuscripts, pamphlets, journals, newspapers,
or books can serve independently as sources of study of many subjects. However,
it is in the integration of such materials and media for research that real
advancement of knowledge is possible. That is the true strength of the Luso-Hispanic
collections and even superlatives are insufficient to describe them.
While it is universally accepted that the basis of the collection was the
genius of Thomas Jefferson, the Library of Congress's foundation predates the
Jefferson Library purchase. And yet, Jefferson did possess extraordinarily
significant publications both on the contemporary and the historical Luso-Hispanic
world. He possessed a copy of Cruz Cano y Olmedilla's famous 1775 map of South
America, which he had printed in facsimile in 1799 in London because the original
was not available through Spanish sources. The practically two hundred-year-old
collections are especially important for understanding the Americas, the Iberian
Peninsula, and other regions of the world in which there exists long-term Hispanic
and Portuguese influence. The first American imprints, from Mexico and from
Peru, appear. Reproductions of codices of the pre-European American societies
are found. The early cartographic renderings of America from Canada to Tierra
del Fuego and early geographic knowledge for Iberia and its advances in the
Eastern Hemisphere emerge. The presence of Muslim, Jewish, and Christian cultures
in Iberia, the development of glossaries and dictionaries, and advances in
the history of science in Europe through Iberian sources are contained in this
remarkable body of cultural output.
The collections are not restricted by chronology. In the holdings, original
manuscripts or codices on America prepared after 1492 appear. Precious reproductions
of pre-European written documents--codices--by indigenous peoples are collected
extensively, and original pre-European musical instruments from Mayan and Andean
sources are found in the Music Division. Similarly, the collection of original
materials from Iberia, both printed and manuscript, date from the fourteenth
and the fifteenth centuries. That historical record of the vast stages of human
development in the Iberian Peninsula and in Latin America, prepared since the
mid-fifteenth century, is extraordinarily rich.
The Library's collections, unlike those of an archive or a museum, include
recent research contributions, thereby providing a complementary body of research
materials for serious study. This extraordinary body of material has been supplemented
by benefactions that have further strengthened it, in many cases providing
the original printed or manuscript document that has been the subject of later
study, as for example, in materials related to Christopher Columbus, early
printing on and in America, exploration in America, or the changing composition
of Luso-Hispanic cultures. The Library's collections, especially in relation
to America, are significant in providing the materials necessary for analyzing
the varied understandings of what came to be called America and continuing
broad research interests on a variety of topics related to America.
The Library of Congress contains treasures for the serious researcher as
well as extensive holdings of documents that reflect upon the five hundred-year
presence of Spanish and Portuguese societies in the Americas and the very rich
cultures of indigenous Americans, Africans, Asians, and other European peoples
who occupy the region. Equally, the history of Spain and Portugal, with their
multiple cultures within the Iberian Peninsula as well as elsewhere in Europe,
Africa, and Asia is strongly represented.
The collections include rich holdings in the area of recorded knowledge of
the peoples of Hispanic and Portuguese origin in the United States, from the
initial Spanish presence in what is now the United States to continuing incidents
of arrival. Our collections, because of their early establishment, mirror the
changes occurring in Luso-Hispanic America during the entire national period,
with full records of governmental publications, gazettes, and newspapers of
the nineteenth and twentieth centuries that allow considerable in-depth research.
Thomas Jefferson, whose private collection served as one of the cornerstones
of the Library, felt a special concern for books on the Americas. He believed
in the basic unity of the Western Hemisphere and understood the need for a
special relationship among the American republics. As early as 1809 he wrote
that "Mexico is one of the most interesting countries of our hemisphere, and
merits our attention." And in 1820 he declared further that "I should rejoice
to see the fleets of Brazil and the United States riding together as brethren
of the same family and pursuing the same object."
The library sold by Jefferson, rich in books about the regions of the world
and relating to most branches of knowledge, included almost two hundred volumes
about Spanish and Portuguese America, the Caribbean, and the Iberian Peninsula,
in Spanish, French, Italian, or Latin, all languages which the former president
read with ease. Jefferson possessed an insatiable curiosity about America,
and in his attempt to learn as much as possible about the diversity of human
societies, as well as the environment of the region, and the conquest of a
large portion of it by Spain and Portugal, he had amassed a learned collection
of books and maps. He believed that it was important for North Americans to
learn Spanish because "our future connection with Spain and Spanish America
will render that language a valuable acquisition," and he also stated that
one ought to keep in mind that much of the history of the Americas was written
in Spanish. Both the collections of the original congressional library, organized
to meet the demands of the legislators for law and general literature, and
Jefferson's library, which expanded considerably the subject and language scope
of the collections, held primarily contemporary, scholarly editions.
After the war between the United States and Mexico (1846-1848) there existed
a practical need to acquire information about the latter country. On August
4, 1848, the Joint Committee of Congress on the Library resolved that "the
Librarian be authorized to purchase all the constitutions and laws of Mexico,
and also to subscribe for a newspaper published in Vera Cruz and for one published
in the City of Mexico." The acquisition of the Peter Force collection in the
1860s brought additional historical materials on the Americas to the Library,
including nineteenth-century manuscript copies of Fray Diego Durán's
1585 Historia Antigua de la Nueva España, Fray Jerónimo
de Alcalá's 1537-1541 Relación de las ceremonias y ritos
y población y gobierno de los indios de la provincia de Mechuacán,
and Mariano Fernández de Echevarría y Veitia's eighteenth-century Historia
del origen de las gentes que poblaron la América septentrional.
The opening of the Library of Congress building in 1897, now the Thomas Jefferson
Building, led to a reexamination of the purposes and possibilities of the institution.
New departments for Manuscripts, Maps, and Music were created. As part of that
reexamination, Librarian of Congress John Russell Young recognized the need
for special development of materials related to the nations of the Western
Hemisphere:
The interblending of Spanish-American history with that of the United
States makes it advisable that we should continue to strengthen ourselves in
that department...It would be wise to the development of the manuscript department
to note particularly what pertains not only to the United States, but to America
in general, Canada, Newfoundland, Nova Scotia, the West Indies, but more especially
the countries to the south--Mexico, Central America and South America....
Knowledge of the Library's growing specialization in the Hispanic and Portuguese
field began to attract important gifts. The family of Ephraim George Squier
gave to the Library the papers of this pioneer American anthropologist and
U.S. diplomat, including over two thousand letters from correspondents principally
relating to the indigenous histories of the Americas, especially of Peru, Central
America, and Mexico. The Henry
Harrisse bequest of 1915 added the correspondence and profusely annotated
copies of the many writings of this scholar of Columbus and the early colonial
period of the Americas.
In 1926 the Library published a desiderata list of what Librarian of Congress
Herbert Putnam termed "bibliographical monumenta, which should indisputably
be represented in the National Library of the United States." That list, which
includes such rarities as Columbus's 1493 printed account of his first voyage
to America, has served as a major collection focus for rare Luso-Hispanic works.
Over the years, through gifts and purchases, the Library of Congress has been
able to acquire many imprints on the list.
In 1927, Archer M. Huntington, Hispanist, poet, and president of the Hispanic
Society of America, established the Huntington Endowment Fund as the first
of several important donations. The interest from this gift continues to be
devoted annually to the purchase of books related to Spanish, Portuguese, and
Latin American arts, crafts, literature, and history published during the past
ten years.
Huntington gave the Library a second endowment the following year to facilitate
the selection and servicing of those materials and helped create a consultantship
in Spanish and Portuguese literature. The first appointee was Juan Riaño
y Gayangos, a distinguished Spanish diplomat who had served from 1914 to 1926
as ambassador of his government to the United States.
In the first year of the appointment, the Library received two significant
gifts from Edward S. Harkness,
who donated a magnificent collection of Spanish manuscripts relating to the
early colonial history of Mexico and Peru, and from John D. Rockefeller, Jr.,
who provided funds for the photocopying of foreign archival manuscripts relating
to the history of America, the result being that many manuscripts concerning
the sixteenth- to nineteenth-century history of the United States's southeastern
and southwestern areas were copied in Mexico, Spain, France, England, Germany,
and Austria.
Father David Rubio served as consultant from 1931 to 1943 and, for the period
1939-1943, was curator of the Hispanic and Portuguese collections. Rubio, with
the use of the Huntington acquisition funds, helped the collections grow from
15,000 to more than 100,000 monographic volumes, and unprecedented efforts
were made to develop further special groups of material. An example of that
effort was the work of John Lomax, who enriched the Archive of American Folk
Song in the American Folklife Reading Room by collecting Hispanic folk music,
including a San Antonio, Texas, version of Las Posadas and the Los
Pastores miracle play.
It was while Father Rubio was serving as consultant in Spanish and Portuguese
literature that Archer Huntington gave the Library of Congress a monetary grant
for the construction of the Hispanic Room and a trust fund for its maintenance.
Father Rubio provided a graphic description of how the decision for those commitments
was made:
After five years of work and several journeys to Spain and Portugal
we now had some one hundred thousand volumes in the Hispanic Section, whereas
there were no more than fifteen thousand when I had begun. From Latin America
there had not been even a single volume of Rubén Darío. Dr. Putnam
[the Librarian of Congress], very pleased with my labor, informed Mr. Huntington
of the state and progress of his foundation and invited him to pay a visit.
Putnam and I were in the central office awaiting him...After lunch...we walked
around Deck A, where the Semitic Division was then located. On seeing it, Huntington
asked: "Where is the Hispanic Division?" I replied: "We are waiting for some
Mecenas [patron of the arts] to help us found it..." Mr. Huntington said goodby
to us and some months later the director of the Library called me to his office
and said: "We have here a new gift from Mr. Huntington to create a special
room dedicated to Hispanic culture."
The establishment of the Hispanic Foundation in 1939 was a natural outcome
of generations of collection development that had begun in 1800. The
Hispanic Room, designed by the architect Paul Philippe Cret and completed
in 1939, was intended to draw the researcher into the beauty of the Spanish
and Portuguese Renaissance reflecting the taste of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century
Iberia, through its vaulted ceiling, wood paneled alcoves, a dado of Puebla
blue tile, and wrought iron balconies. The room was dedicated on October 12,
1939. In his address, Librarian of Congress Archibald MacLeish emphasized the
oneness of the Americas and the need for Americans, both north and south, to
appreciate their land for its own merits. To those living in the United States
he presented the challenge of learning about the other American past, a past
that defended human liberty at a time when witches were being hanged in Salem.
In his eyes, Latin America shared with the United States the "unforgettable
experience of the journey toward the West and the westward hope." He saw, in
the Hispanic Room, a place where students of the Americas could follow the
great Hispanic tradition that, with its ideas and its poetry, had populated "by
far the greater part of these two continents." He closed his remarks by appealing
for a universal brotherhood of the human spirit.
There are men in the world today--and many rather than few--who
say that the proper study of mankind is not man but a particular kind of man.
There are those who teach that the only cultural study proper to a great people
is its own culture. There are those also who say that the only real brotherhood
is that blood brotherhood for which so many wars have been fought and by which
so many deaths are still justified. The dedication of this room and of this
collection of books is a demonstration of the fact that these opinions are
not valid in the Americas: that in the Americas, peopled by so many sufferings,
so many races, the highest brotherhood is still the brotherhood of the human
spirit and the true study is the study of the best.
At the time of the Hispanic Room's dedication, it was hoped that the two
vestibules could be decorated by a Latin American artist. Cândido
Portinari, the outstanding Brazilian muralist, was selected to prepare
four large paintings, which he completed between October 1941 and January 12,
1942. In designing the murals, Portinari imposed the restriction that the figures
and the objects be so represented as to apply not to one age alone but to the
whole succession of periods since the arrival of the Spaniards and Portuguese
in America. Through four panels, Discovery of
the Land, Entry into the Forest, Teaching
of the Indians, and Mining of Gold,
the muralist represented Indian, black, and white peoples in America.
It is evident that over the years the Library of Congress has been assembling
remarkable Hispanic and Portuguese collections, located throughout the Library;
in its Hispanic Division and other area studies divisions, in the special collections,
and within the general books collection. These collections have been assembled
and continue to be enhanced by timely donations of rare and unique treasures
and by consistent acquisition of contemporary items through purchase, exchange,
and the efforts of the Library of Congress's overseas offices. An office was
established in Rio de Janeiro in 1966 which has had a major impact on the quantity
and the quality of our Brasiliana collection.
In the Library's Rare Book and Special Collections Division, there are copies
of the earliest books printed in America--the 1544 Mexican imprints, Juan de
Zumárraga's Doctrina
breve muy provechosa, Juan de Gerson's Tripartito
del christianissimo y consolatorio doctor Juan Gerson de doctrina christiana,
and Denis le Chartreux's Este es un copedio [sic] breve que tracta.... Two
of the earliest books printed in South America, in Lima, form part of the collection:
Luís López's 1585 Tercero
Cathecismo y exposición de la doctrina Christiana and Antonio
Ricardo's 1586 Vocabulario
en la lengua general del Peru llamada Quichua. Among Spanish incunabula
are a 1491 edition of the Siete Partidas and Fernán de
Mexía's book
of noble families (1492). The Hebraic Section of the African and Middle
Eastern Division has the first book published in Portugal, Moses ben Nahman's Perush
ha-Torah (Lisbon, 1489).
One of the unique documents housed in the Rare Book and Special Collections
Division is the Trevisan
Codex, a highly prized manuscript forming part of the John
Boyd Thacher collection and constituting the 1502 report by a Venetian
agent in Spain of Spanish explorations in America and Portugal's arrival in
Brazil and Calicut (presently Kozhikode in Kerala State, India). A collection
of manuscripts and printed books dealing with the exploits of Sir Francis Drake
in America and Europe was a gift in 1979 from Hans P. Kraus. Among other valuable
items, this collection contains sixteenth-century manuscript descriptions of
the coasts of Central America, of the greater part of the Viceroyalty of Peru,
of Francisco de Ulloa's 1553 expedition through the Straits of Magellan, and
of the exploits of Nunho da Silva who, captured by Drake in 1577, became part
of his command and later explored the Pacific coast of South America.
The Manuscript Division possesses outstanding Luso-Hispanic items including
Columbus's 1502 manuscript book of privileges on vellum. That Division additionally
holds several major groups of Hispanic and Portuguese materials, such as a
collection of Portuguese manuscripts, the Hans P. Kraus Collection of Spanish
Manuscripts, the Edward Harkness Collection, and the Henry Albert Monday Collection
of Mexican colonial materials.
Important groups of materials can be found in the Law Library, the Hispanic
Division, the Music Division, the Prints and Photographs Division, the Motion
Picture, Broadcasting, and Recorded Sound Division, the Geography and Map Division,
the Serial and Government Publications Division, the Microform Reading Room,
the African and Middle Eastern Division, the American Folklife Reading Room,
and the general collections of the Library of Congress. An outstanding strength
of the Library's collections lie in the accumulation of printed materials from
and on the areas of the Luso-Hispanic world. For practically two centuries,
the Library has obtained complete sets of official gazettes, debates of parliamentary
bodies, and all other significant official publications of national agencies,
as well as selected provincial or state imprints. As a result, its collections
of official documents are among the strongest in the world, as are its holdings
of newspapers from Latin America, Spain, and Portugal. Microform copies of
more than 4,000 pre-1800 Latin American imprints selected from the bibliographies
of José Toribio Medina, Organization of American States's technical
reports, and 8,179 nineteenth century Spanish plays are part of a rich body
of research materials copied from other archives and collections.
As an integral part of these large and expanding collections, since 1942
the Library, through the Hispanic Division, has developed the Archive
of Hispanic Literature on Tape. The Archive today contains the recordings
of more than 650 authors reading from their own works; eight of them have been
awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature thus far.
Although most published Hispanic and Portuguese materials are located in
the general collections and other special collections in the Library, bibliographic
activity and reference services are conducted primarily in the Hispanic Division.
In addition to special bibliographies and guides, the Hispanic Division prepares
the annual, annotated Handbook
of Latin American Studies. First published in 1936, the Handbook is
universally recognized by scholars as the basic reference and acquisitions
tool on Latin America. This long-term cooperative enterprise, which has more
than a hundred contributing editors, each a noted specialist, effectively allows
the Library's Latin American materials and its specialists to interact with
others in the field, for purposes of research, collection development, and
advancement of scholarship, and it is used by librarians to gauge the quality
of their collections.
The primary function of the Hispanic Division continues to be the development
of the Library's Hispanic and Portuguese collections, the facilitation of its
use by the Congress of the United States, other federal agencies, and scholars,
and the explanation and interpretation of its nature and content through published
guides, bibliographies, and studies.
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A Brief Researcher's Guide
USE OF THE LIBRARY OF CONGRESS
The primary function of the Library of Congress is to serve the Congress.
In addition, the Library provides service to government agencies, other libraries,
scholars, and the general public. All researchers preparing to come to the
Library are strongly encouraged to pursue preliminary exploration in public,
academic, or special libraries, so that they can make efficient use of their
time in the collections of the Library of Congress.
The Library of Congress is a research library whose collections are kept
in restricted, closed stacks. The Library's lending is restricted to official
borrowers. Under certain conditions, the Library lends materials from its collections
to other libraries for the use of their readers.
THE HISPANIC DIVISION
The Library of Congress does not have separate Hispanic and Portuguese collections.
Upon arrival at the Library of Congress, a researcher interested in the Luso-Hispanic
world should consult with the reference specialists in the reading room of
the Hispanic Division, located in the Hispanic Room on the second floor of
the Thomas Jefferson Building (LJ 240). That room contains a specialized reference
collections on Hispanic and Portuguese themes.
For materials other than periodicals or books from the general books collection,
the researcher must visit one of the Library's specialized reading rooms. Generally
these research areas have custody of material based on format rather than their
geographic origin. So, graphic prints usually are found in the Prints and Photographs
Division and maps are found in the Geography and Map Division. Occasionally,
such items may appear elsewhere in the Library's collections. Maps and graphic
prints in bound volumes can be found in the Rare Book and Special Collections
Division. One of the essential tasks of the reference specialists in the Hispanic
Division is to provide specialized assistance to a researcher seeking materials
in this large and complex library of over one hundred million objects.
Each reading room offers finding aids, bibliographies, and pertinent reference
materials as well as access to the Library's main computerized catalog. The
Library's Reference Referral Service provides information by telephone (202-707-5522).
It directs reference calls or correspondence to the appropriate reading room
as necessary. Email inquiries may be directed to the appropriate Ask
a Librarian address.
The following is a list of the reading rooms and special collections, in
addition to what is offered in the Hispanic Division, that could be of value
for the researcher with an interest in the study of the Luso-Hispanic world:
- African and Middle Eastern Reading
Room (Serving African, Hebraic and Near East Sections) Jefferson Building,
LJ 220
- American Folklife Reading Room Jefferson
Building, LJ G17
- Asian Reading Room Jefferson
Building, LJ 150
- Business Reference Services Adams
Building, LA 508
- European Reading Room Jefferson
Building, LJ 350
- Geography and Map Reading Room Madison
Building, LM B01
- Law Library Reading Room Madison
Building, LM 201
- Local History and Genealogy
Reading Room Jefferson Building, LJ G20
- Main Reading Room. Jefferson
Building, LJ 100
- Manuscript Reading Room Madison
Building, LM 101
- Microform Reading Room Jefferson
Building, LJ 107
- Motion Picture and Television Reading
Room Madison Building, LM 336
- Newspaper and Current Periodical
Reading Room (Serving also current US and foreign governmental serial
publications). Madison Building, LM 133
- Performing Arts Reading Room Madison
Building, LM 113
- Prints and Photographs Reading Room Madison
Building, LM 339
- Rare Book and Special Collections
Reading Room Jefferson Building, LJ 256
- Recorded Sound Reference Center Madison
Building, LM 113
- Science Reading Room Adams
Building, LA 5010
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