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| Madrid's Feria del Libro |
Last week was the opening day of the "Feria del Libro" in Madrid, Spain. It will run for most of the month of May. There were old and new books for sale all along the Paseo de la Castellana, in typical European style book kiosks. Hubby had a great afternoon walking the Castellana between Plaza Colon and the Cibeles fountain whilst perusing the books and art prints.
What was disturbing was the number of old books from the 1700s and earlier that were sold in pieces (by the page), and also very old (1500s? - 1600s) handwritten court records sold in binders. These pages were ripped or cut right out of books. Who knows how the court records were acquired? Probably the sum of the price of individual pages equals more than the price of the book. I suppose that people like framing the pages to look at the print or calligraphy, but the genealogist in me shudders at the idea.
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Copyright 2011, Heather Wilkinson Rojo
Heather... I think that is just awful. One has to wonder how they did acquire court records. Do the courts know about this. It will all result in a huge loss to historians now and especially in the future.
ReplyDeleteVery sad!
Lucie
Heather, I'm on board with you and Lucie... that's sad, and kind of alarming. Maybe (hopefully) those records have been digitized, but even if so, it seems unwise to dispose of the originals. I shudder at the idea that digitization could be used to justify disposing of original records. And the same with those early books. It's kind of sickening!
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