End of description of the Salvador Fund

The Unit of Scientific Information Resources for Research (URICI) and the Botanical Institute of Barcelona (IBB) have collaborated in the archival treatment of the Salvador Family collection and its incorporation into the collective catalogue of the Network of Libraries and Archives of the CSIC.

The Salvador family collection arose from the activity carried out by this family of apothecaries and botanists from Barcelona between the 18th and 19th centuries. Thanks to their work, both scientific, academic and professional, we have a very interesting collection of documents, made up of personal correspondence and different documents related to the professional activity of the members of the family and manuscripts relating to their properties in the 18th and 19th centuries.

The Salvador collection arrived at the Botanical Institute of Barcelona in two phases; the first was thanks to the work carried out by Pius Font Quer who, in 1938 and after having located the documentation fifteen years earlier, managed to bring it together; after this, Barcelona City Council bought the missing part in 2013, which enabled the collection to be considerably enlarged and a large amount of correspondence, as well as judicial and economic documentation, to be recovered.

This collection had already received a previous treatment in which approximately half of it had been inventoried. The collaboration between IBB and URICI has enabled a description project to be carried out, in accordance with the international ISAD(G) standard, in the collective catalogue of the CSIC, from where they are now accessible to anyone interested in consulting the documentation of this important family from Barcelona. With this collaboration between the IBB and URICI, the total treatment of the collection has been completed, with the result that just over 4,000 records of documentary units have been produced.

The importance of the Salvador family’s documentary collection lies in its exclusivity and originality, as it is a unique collection in all of Spain, both in terms of the documentary quality of the collection and the quantity of manuscript documents it contains. The Salvador collection is comparable to other collections of European apothecaries such as Jacques Barrelier (1606-1672), Joseph Pitton de Tournefort (1656-1708) or Hans Sloane (1670-1753), who are the protagonists of European archives and documentary centres in their respective countries, with the particularity that the Salvador collection is preserved in all its aspects and in a remarkable state of conservation. The Salvador fonds preserves correspondence with James Petiver (c.1663-1718), Hans Sloane, Giovan Battista Trionfetti (1656-1708), Michelangelo Tilli (1655-1740), Guillaume Nissolle (1647-1735), Antoine de Jussieu (1686-1758), Bernard de Jussieu (1699-1777), Hermann Boerhaave (1668-1738), Paolo Boccone (1633-1704) and Giuseppe Auria de Sicilia.

The collection contains more than 1.50 linear metres, with a chronology between 1585 and the end of the 19th century, with a majority presence of documentation from the 17th and 18th centuries, “this means that after a correct archival treatment of the Salvador collection, it is the most important documentary collection of natural sciences in Europe” says Neus Ibáñez, curator of the herbarium and the Salvador Cabinet of the Botanical Institute of Barcelona (IBB).

With the future digitisation, the Salvador Family collection will be available in full text for consultation, along with its associated descriptions, allowing researchers and other users to access the valuable information it contains from anywhere.