Orlando Ribeiro’s personal library

The private library of Orlando Ribeiro comprises about 14,000 titles of scientific works and was bequeathed to the Centro de Estudos Geográficos de Lisboa (CEG). After 1965 the library was jointly developed with his wife Suzanne Daveau.

The donation of the library to the CEG is a contribution to enhance the information resources available to the scientific community that Orlando Ribeiro had help to renew and develop. It was in this same spirit that he donated to the Instituto de Geografia da Faculdade de Letras da Universidade do Porto an important set of publications that were duplicated in both his library and that of the CEG.

Envisaging a wider diffusion and easier utilization of his bibliographic legacy, a Project was launched to organize and process the collection so to make available the corresponding catalogue on the Internet. The project has been carried out by a team of library professionals, under the scientific co-ordination of Suzanne Daveau. The first phase of the Project (2001-2003) was funded by the Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia. In the current stage the work has been subsidized by the Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian.

The information now available in the Catalogue respects the documentation that was held in the so called "library of the garden", from its location in Orlando Ribeiro’s house of Vale de Lobos. For the most part it consists of offprints and periodical issues for which there are about 8,500 bibliographic records in the Catalogue. That remaining part, still in processing, corresponds to materials held in the main study room of the house and is largely constituted by reference works and scientific monographs, organized by subject in a pragmatic manner that was consolidated throughout the years.

Beyond its scientific value, the documentation now made available has the particularity to let us know the more than 2,000 dedications by a great variety of authors. The front matter of the works with dedications was digitised and the images are accessible from the respective bibliographic records. These dedications help us to understand the network of Orlando Ribeiro’s and Suzanne Daveau’s relationships, which includes a wide variety of important names and largely exceeds the academic world. In some cases, as in the brief dedications by the Prime-Minister Marcelo Caetano, the respect for the man and the scientist is patent. Other, more affectionate, demonstrate closer relationships, as in those by the historian Manuel Viegas Guerreiro who signs his nickname "Blé", the poet Ruy Cinaty who addresses to Orlando Ribeiro as the "grumbling Orlando"; or the geologist Georges Zbyszewski, who jokes with the expression "H. M. Agakham Ribeiro II", or, yet, the long and good-humoured dedications by the writer Vitorino Nemésio, remembering travels they made together.

Besides the bibliographic collections, the Orlando Ribeiro’s legacy includes a great variety of other items that he carefully listed in his will such as note-cards, field notebooks, scientific inquiries, photographs, engravings, maps, geographic leaflets, as well as personal memories of his scientific life such as portraits, correspondence, diplomas and other awarded distinctions. Particularly interesting is, for example, the singular collection of oil-lamps that his students used to offer him in recognition for the light received during scientific excursions. All these materials concur to the richness, originality and vast potential of Orlando Ribeiro’s legacy, worthy of new projects towards its preservation and divulgation.

(Photographs © Duarte Belo)