Catalogue

Access to Fundación Juanelo Turriano documents.

The Fundación Juanelo Turriano Library has been in operation since 1989, drawing at first from the personal library of its founder, José Antonio García-Diego. That initial contribution has been grown with acquisitions purchased, donated or exchanged. In December 2015 the library’s stacks contained over 7 500 documents, including collections of ancient books (388), reprints (1 323) and specialised journals (102 titles).

The library’s lines of action are:

• to organise, conserve, stabilise and restore its stacks
• to analytically catalogue and extract all the information available in tables of contents, abstracts and so on
• to standardise and translate authorities into English
• to digitise its stacks and enlarge the digital library
• to foster the library’s presence in collective catalogues
• to collaborate with other institutions
• to provide users with quality service.

Work has been ongoing since 2009 to digitise the library’s oldest stacks, the ones of greatest interest to users. At the same time, they have been stabilised, conserved and restored. Both digitisation and conservation are ongoing at this writing.

Thanks to an agreement concluded with Ildefonso Sánchez del Río’s family, likewise in 2009, all the illustrious engineer’s professional papers are now custodied by the library: 28 boxes of documents, drawings, designs and photographs. They have been digitised and are available for reference.

In 2010, the works digitised until that time were uploaded to ISSUU, a digital publications platform, to great public acceptance and acclaim. That was the kernel of a Digital Library.

The new SIGB, Eos.Web Express, was launched in February 2012. This completely web-based system was developed with Microsoft.NET technology and the SQL Server relational database and assigned a search engine. It is compliant with all international standards and based on MARC21.

In late 2012, the library’s catalogue was listed in the OCLC Worldcat, proof of its compliance with the strict quality standards required for that listing.

In 2014, the digital library acquired a new look, with additional features and improvements in the search engine for its digital catalogue.

Under an agreement reached with the University of la Rioja’s Fundación Dialnet in late 2014, a significant share of our stacks will be included in its database, today the major portal for disseminating scientific output in the Spanish language.

The library is located on the Fundación Juanelo Turriano premises.

It contains:

• a collection of over 380 books published before 1900 and some dating back to the sixteenth century
• modern stacks consisting of over 7 100 titles
• a periodicals section with over 100 specialised journals
• a digital library with over 100 titles (178 books) and 40 000 images that can be accessed from the foundation’s website.

• over 2 200 chapters, articles and communications from our stacks.

The subject areas covered include:

• history and geography (universal, European, Spanish, American...)
• history of art and architecture (architecture and urban planning, sculpture, painting...)
• history of science (mathematics, medicine, astronomy, physics, chemistry...)
• history of technology (machines, industrial archaeology, civil engineering, industrial heritage...)
• general (literature, linguistics, religion...).

The foundation’s library is open to anyone interested in the history of science and technology, although students and researchers may be the ones to profit most from its collection.

The foundation provides its users a bibliographic search and assistance service to explore the collections of their interest.

This service is available on-line at documentacion@juaneloturriano.com or by phone on +34 915 313 005.

In 2009 a bibliographic restoration programme was undertaken to draw greater value from the foundation’s older books by improving their accessibility. This programme covers the assessment of the condition of the works and the intensity of the action required to guarantee their physical integrity. By year-end 2015, a total of 53 books had been restored.