Conoscere i manoscritti aldrovandiani. Il progetto di catalogazione della Biblioteca Universitaria di Bologna

Abstract

The aim of the essay is to give an overview of the cataloguing work of the manuscripts published on Manus Online, the catalogue edited by the Istituto centrale per il catalogo unico (MIC), and to open a debate in relation to the choices made, and continually reviewed, to describe manuscripts that are particularly difficult to comprehend, such as Aldrovandi’s. The manuscripts produced by Ulisse Aldrovandi and his assistants mostly preserve the results of his research, from reports on natural phenomena to miscellany of extracts texts he consulted. The complexity of the research and references led the Bolognese scholar to organise indices of the contents, lists of the authors and works consulted, and even synoptic tables with which he summarised and schematised the research path on each subject he approached.