Hundreds of historical books spread in libraries or archives. Many were valued at the time of publishing, but are they still relevant nowadays? ReSEED Team believes so.
Therefore, we have started the building of ReadSEED, the project’s virtual library. The goal is to gather historical books that stand out in the research journey and are already in the public domain and digitized. The library facilitates access to them providing direct links to the original online sources – mainly public libraries -, besides giving a brief review of the book and the author.
The investigation guides us to different sources concerning the Iberian Peninsula. In this first selection of books, there are editions from the 18th to the 20th century, although some are additions to older books, such as the case of “Agricultura General” de Gabriel Alonso de Herrera”, originally published in the 16th century.
Themes
Agriculture instructions, different food aspects, botany, travel literature, geography, irrigation: some examples of subjects available in the ReadSEED. The library brings not only Portuguese and Spanish authors but also foreigners who wrote about agricultural practices, rural daily life, different institutions or were attracted to the plants brought from the new worlds to the Iberian Peninsula. German naturalist Friedrick Link is one example. The scientific curiosity led him to the Portuguese flora, providing a historical and economic contextualization about crops that shaped the Portuguese landscape.
The virtual library will be constantly updated. In addition to useful or curious information that can be found, encouraging the reading or re-reading of these book also contributes to identifying the role of the Iberian Peninsula in the building process of scientific knowledge in Europe and worldwide.
