It is widely accepted that, in the United Kingdom, the most extensive
resources for Latin American studies, in the widest variety of formats,
are those of The British Library. It has no physically separate
Latin American collection; the holdings are dispersed throughout
many of its component departments.
The British Library's Philatelic
Collection includes not only Latin American postage stamps,
but also revenue material, fiscal stamps, postal stationery, and
other associated items. The Librarianship and Information Sciences
Service (formerly the Library Association Library) has, since 1933,
built up a substantial collection of monographs, serials and theses
on librarianship and information science in Latin America. In the
Music Library there is to
be found a rich variety of Latin American material, ranging from
classical scores to popular songs, and the Map
Library includes plans and charts, both printed and in manuscript.
Extensive support literature for both the Music and Map libraries
is dispersed throughout the general collections of printed books.
It includes works on the history of Latin American music, and on
its composers, on the development of indigenous instruments, and
studies of the social significance of musical trends, for example,
of the tango. Geographical works are supplemented by histories of
exploration and travel journals, as well as by books on the development
of Latin American mapmaking.
Those whose interest is in the science, technology and industry
of Latin America will find their research needs fulfilled by the
Science Technology and Business'
extensive holdings of current and archival monographs and serials
on the life sciences and technologies, medicine, biotechnology,
earth sciences, astronomy and pure mathematics. Patent specifications,
trade marks, directories, market surveys, trade literature and company
information are also acquired, the collections being made more widely
available by means of the Business and Biotechnology Information
Services supplemented by a linguistic aid service for those with
an insufficient reading knowledge of Spanish or Portuguese.
British Library Newspapers
houses not only daily publications, but also serials with a less
than monthly frequency. Its Latin American collections are somewhat
uneven; even by the early 1960's, only three current daily titles
were taken, and by the late 1970's the figure had increased only
to seventeen. It was recognised that prompt action was required
to improve holdings in an area of notorious difficulty, where The
British Library was one of the very few libraries in Great Britain,
if not the only one, to possess the acquisition, processing, storage
and conservation resources necessary to build and maintain a strong
collection. Consequently, at the beginning of the 1980's, a thorough
review was carried out jointly by Newspapers staff and the Hispanic
Section. Currently received titles were scrutinised, and compared
with publications hitherto unrepresented in the collection. The
resultant improvement was remarkable, and by 1985, at least one
current title, either in hard copy or microform, was being received
from every country of Latin America. The larger countries were represented
by a wider selection, in order adequately to reflect variations
in regional political and cultural opinion.
In addition to current publications, approximately one thousand
earlier titles are held, dating from the early nineteenth century.
Constant attempts are made to remedy inadequacies by purchasing
on the secondhand market or by acquiring microfilm from other libraries.
Examples of items added to the collection in recent years are complete
runs of the Montevideo fort nightly El Investigador (1833),
and of 0 Besouro, an illustrated satirical review published
in Rio de Janeiro from 1878 to 1879, and a substantial microfilm
backfile of the Buenos Aires Herald.
Britsih Library Newspapers also holds collections of press cuttings
containing items of Latin American interest, most notably the International
Information Bureau Collection (1915-1920), the League of Nations
Union Intelligence Department Collection (1920-1924) and the Foreign
Research and Press Service Collection (1939-1946). Newspaper storage
and preservation problems are eased by an extensive microfilming
programme. Copies of some films are made available for sale and
in the case of less rare items, the originals themselves are dispersed,
after filming, to other libraries.
In 1983, The British Library incorporated the British Institute
of Recorded Sound, a unique resource centre for the study of all
kinds of music, literature, social and zoological sciences. The
Institute, renamed The
Sound Archive, now holds a total of around three quarters of
a million discs, over fortyfive thousand hours of tape recordings
and a growing collection of video materials, together with books
and periodicals on all aspects of recorded sound. Latin American
researchers have access to thousands of relevant recordings, not
only of classical compositions, but also of popular and traditional
music, as well as of writers reading and discussing their work and
of dramatic performances.
The collections are publicized through lectures, and in reproductions
of recordings. Recent examples are a lecture on Bolivian music (Spring,
1988) and an item issued as part of the Archive's World and Traditional
Music and entitled 'Music of the Tukano and Cuna peoples of Colombia',
a collection of field recordings made in 1960-1961 featuring music
for ritual and festival.
The Department of Manuscripts
holds a considerable number of items of Latin American interest.
See Taylor's article 'Manuscritos
hispánicos de la British Library'. The foundation collections,
Cotton, Egerton, Harley, Sloane and Royal, include official transcripts
of government reports, manuscript maps, journals of voyages (most
notably of the seventeenth century) and examples of picture writing.
Similar material is to be found throughout the series of Additional
Manuscripts, together with sailing charts, travel accounts, views
of scenery and towns, and works in Indian languages, including grammars
and vocabularies, Bibles and sermons.
The following are just a few examples of the Latin American content
of some of the named manuscript Collections: the Coventry papers
(indigenous languages), the South Sea Company papers and correspondence,
1711-1856 and the Vansittart papers (maps and charts, Spanish and
Portuguese colonial reports), the Sir Woodbine Parish papers (on
the government of Buenos Aires, and on the Falkland Islands and
Patagonia), the correspondence of Jeremy Bentham (including letters
from Bernardino Rivadavia, José del Valle and Francisco de
Paula Santander), the Venezuelan papers (a collection of transcripts
of official documents relating to the Spanish occupation in Trinidad,
Margarita, Guiana, Venezuela and other adjacent provinces, and to
the position there of the English, Dutch, French and Portuguese,
1530-1824), the British Guiana papers (a collection of transcripts
of official and other documents relating to the Portuguese occupation
of Maranhão, Grão Pará and the adjoining parts
of Brazil, 1624-1822), the papers of Sir Austen Henry Layard, UnderSecretary
of State for Foreign Affairs, 1852 and 1861-1866 (miscellaneous
items on or from most Latin American countries), the Mackenzie papers,
the Collingwood papers (trade material and items on slavery), the
Aberdeen papers (a rich and varied collection of nineteenth century
manuscripts, with special emphasis on Brazil) and the Quechua language
collection of Sir Clements Robert Markham. Further references can
easily be gleaned from the catalogues compiled by Pascual de Gayangos
and Peter Walne.
The examples listed above show the bias of the collection as a
whole towards historical and political material rather than literature,
and a scarcity of twentieth century items. Today, the Department
is obliged by its financial circumstances to concentrate on the
purchase of British material and there are few resources available
for the acquisition of manuscripts from Latin America. However,
the papers of British statesmen and businessmen can often provide
a fruitful source for the study of at least some aspects of the
area.
Further information
Hispanic Section
The British Library
96 Euston Road
London NW1 2DB
United Kingdom
Tel: +44 (0)20 7412 7569
Fax: +44 (0)20 7412 7784
Email: hisp-enquiries@bl.uk
