Debora Di Pietro (University of Catania)
Although Sicily may be considered a peripheral area of Europe for the development and spread of mobile type printing, for centuries being a crossroad of peoples and cultures made the development of rich and valuable book collections possible.
The main goal of the Archivio Possessori della Sicilia, or APS is to create a database which would enable to collect and track ownership marks in the early printed book collections held in Sicilian libraries. This digital tool is designed to facilitate the study of the history of incunabula collections using ancient books as a historical source. Designed to collect provenances that have emerged from the research and cataloging of specimens, the project aims to analyze the migration of incunabula through time and space, starting from the places of production to the libraries where they are preserved today. In the broader tradition of provenance studies of recent decades, the database aims to reveal new data on the circulation and use of books in a peripheral area of Europe, Sicily, from the second half of the 15th century onward. Starting with the analysis of the Incunabula collections in Catania, the database will provide rapid access to owners’ information and provenance, tracing collections that have been dispersed and reconstructing events partially lost to memory.