Blueprint (or Database Structure) of 500 Year Old Library

APPENDIX TO HERNANDO’S LIBRARY IN 1539

I made an elaborated example of Hernado’s catalogues and lists, based on three random present day books, to better understand and get a grip on what he had in mind with his library in 1539. Based on the information of Hernando to king, Hernando’s testament, and Juan Pérez’s ‘Memoria’. (I skipped the information in the rest of Pérez Fernández and Wilson-Lee’s book for now.)

Sources

Overview with who says what where:

Book with Numbers on physical books

List Numbers, from 1 to n, on the physical books in library. Answering Q: Which book has number 15,343?

Catalog Authors and Titles

List Authors from a to z. Answering Q: Which books did Herodotus write?

List Titles from a to z. Answering Q: Who wrote title ‘The Histories’?

List Incipts from a to z. Answering Q: Which author or title belongs to this first line?

Question. Did this separate list exist? If not, how can Hernando (or another sumista) check, in a ‘Book with Numbers’ with 15,000 books, if a bookseller is selling a book by Juan Andrés as if it was by someone else? Juan Pérez writes: “In these, as I have said, there are names of authors, names of works with no author, and all the incipits of these authors and the works. And all of it in proper alphabetical order.” The information from Juan Pérez does not rule out this list with incipits.

Catalog Epitomes

List Summaries (or Epitomes) with a number in order of being made.

Question. Was this epitome number added to the ‘Book with Numbers’? It must have been. If it was only added on the ‘book-strip-with-30-items’ the epitome number was forever lost in a bundle(s) of thousands of strips. 

Catalog Materias

List Subjects from a to z. Answering Q: Which authors wrote in which books on ‘Ancient Persia’ long?

Question: was it the task of the sumista to add main subject to ‘Catalog Ciencias’ and related topics to ‘Catalog Materias’ after the epitome was made?

Catalog Ciencias

A ‘book-strip-with-30-items’ will be made for each materias number of a book. These slips or annotations can be ordered and rearranged perputually. 15,000 books with each three slips will result in 45,000 different slips. With 30 data items, ?most? of them in biblioglyphs, it results in millions of possible combinations of paper strungs.

Summarize Areas of Knowledge

Juan Pérez writes that each Area of Knowledge must be summarized in 1 to 4 books.

Eternal Maintenance

Each year books, obrezillas and prints must be included and processed in the catalogues and lists. As a result, Spain has information of these sources in one place available. Searchable, consultable and a starting point for gaining knowledge. Hernando: “For nobody can read the multitude of books that have been written in each discipline.”

P.S. Next week (here) I shall give you my comments and findings on Hernando's library. Someone else's library as a mirror for me.