The ICHN
Collection
The ICHN Collection brings together a
total of 600 books and some 300 journals in the Montilivi Campus Library
of the University of Girona. The collection was received in 1998 when the
Institució Catalana d'Història Natural (ICHN, Catalan Institute of
Natural History) donated its own holdings and those of many others
acquired through exchanges with institutions from around the world
(Argentina, Japan, Portugal, Switzerland, etc.). As stipulated in the
donation agreement between the ICHN and the UdG, members of the Institute
can consult the collection without having to be students of the University
of Girona.
The Library of the UdG is not only
responsible for the upkeep, cataloguing and management of the collection
donated by the ICHN, but is also in charge of the exchanges initiated by
the Institute, representing 155 journal titles.
The assessment made of the donated
publications is very positive. There are publications from the 1920s which
are not even to be found in the Biblioteca de Catalunya (the
national library of Catalonia), and the University of Girona is in fact
the only Catalan university possessing most of these titles. The large
quantity of books has also served to complete the list of titles already
part of the UdG collection, and as for the Butlletí de la Institució
Catalana d'Història Natural, we are the only university that has the
entire collection.
Following are
some images
of books of the ICHN Collection
The Institució Catalana d'Història Natural
-
The Institució Catalana d'Història Natural (ICHN,
Catalan Institute of Natural History).
Founded in 1899 in Barcelona by a group of students. At the beginning
members included prestigious naturalists. The Butlletí de la Institució
Catalana d'Història Natural, the Memòries and the Treballs
of the Institute provide an idea of the remarkable efforts of its members.
In a latent state and hardly noticed from 1936 until 1972, in that year it
resumed its activities with great vigour. Since 1915 it has been an
affiliate of the Institut d'Estudis Catalans (IEC, Institute of Catalan
Studies). In 1987 it had almost one thousand members.
The group of founding students were Joan Baptista
d'Aguilar-Amat i Banús (1882-1936), Joan Alzina i Melis (1879-1979),
Francesc Badia i Guia, Josep Balcells i Masó, Josep Maluquer i Nicolau
(1883-1960), Salvador Maluquer i Nicolau (1881-1955), Josep M. Mas de
Xaxars (1881-1946) and Antoni Novellas i Roig (1879-1951). Their interests
were aimed at "reuniting science with Catalan nationalism as others had
done with history, art, literature and even hiking".
From the beginning there have been
frictions within the Institute. The conflicts ended in 1904 with a
break-up, and the name was changed to the Institució Catalana de
Ciències Naturals (ICCN, Catalan Institute of Natural Sciences). That
same year a new Catalan Institute of Natural History was founded and soon
became, with the disappearance of the ICCN, the organisation which truly
continued the work of the former ICHN. With this "rebirth", however, the
ICHN lost its apolitical and non-denominational character. In 1906 the
ICHN was a prestigious organisation, with its founding students working as
legal professionals or engineers and being accomplished naturalists. Proof
of their prestige was their participation in the election of the members
of the Junta Municipal de Ciències Naturals (four of the eight
members of the first Junta were also members of the ICHN). In 1915,
in search of economic stability, an attempt was made to improve relations
with the Institute of Catalan Studies (IEC). That was how the first volume
of Treballs de la Institució Catalana d'Història Natural appeared.
The headquarter of the ICHN was moved to the offices of the IEC and in
1917 the Institute's collections were incorporated into the new Museu
de Catalunya (Museum of Catalonia).
Between 1924 and 1931, the Institute
functioned almost in the shadow of the IEC. Until the outbreak of the
Civil War, the ICHN survived thanks to the patronage of the Provincial
Government and the City Council of Barcelona and of people such as Rafael
Patxot, Concepció Patxot i Rabell and Josep M. Bofill i Pichot. During the
Second Republic scientific excursions as well as good relations with the
Institute of Catalan Studies were resumed. At the same time, the number of
members doubled, and the Institute started to abandon its
denominationalism and began to enter into the world of teaching. After the
Civil War, the ICHN remained more than a decade in total obscurity. Then
there would be occasional meetings of groups of botanists, geologists,
zoologists and biologists, but the reality was that by the 1960s the
organisation was on the verge of disappearing. In 1972 a small group from
the Institute of Catalan Studies, led by two naturalists, decided to end
the "temporary suspension" of the ICHN. That same year the first public
scientific workshops were held and soon afterwards a project to produce a
white paper on the natural conditions of the Catalan speaking countries.
In 1976 the Institute formed a bridge between the scientific world and the
world of civic and political action. In 1982 the situation tended more
towards normalisation, connected with the improved situation of the IEC.
The publication of periodicals, catalogues and field guides, as well as
activities such as excursions and the retraining of members who worked as
teachers were strengthened.
·
Institució Catalana d'Història Natural.
Breu història de la Institució Catalana d'Història Natural. On
line. Internet. 2 June 2003. Accessible at http://www.iec.es/institucio/societats/ICHistoriaNatural/història.htm.
(Consulted 7-2-2003).
·
"Institució Catalana d'Història Natural".
Gran enciclopèdia catalana. Ed. 1989.
Acces to the catalogue of the ICHN Collection
The ICHN Collection catalogue is
incorporated into the
UdG Library Catalogue .
Bulletin of the Institució Catalana d'Història Natural
A
publication of the Catalan Institute of Natural History. It was published
from January 1901 until 1936. Much later (1949) volume 37 appeared, in
commemoration of its fiftieth anniversary as an institution. Its pages
have included original work, dedicated to the various branches of the
natural sciences.
The official approval given to the
statutes of the Institute in 1900 includes plans for the creation of a
bulletin to promote the study of the natural sciences. Thus, by March or
April 1901 the first edition of the Butlletí de la Institució Catalana
d'Història Natural had appeared. In this first number the interest in
publishing a monthly bulletin is evident. With a new set of statutes in
1904, the Butlletí fell under the influence of the
denominationalism of the time, and the sentence "There cannot be true
dissent between faith and reason" appeared in Latin on its heading. With
the Primo de Rivera dictatorship, the Butlletí was no longer
written principally in Catalan, and it happened that there were headings
with the name Butlletí de la Institución Catalana de Historia Natural.
In 1928, 85% of the articles were written in spanish, and only in 1932 did
the number of articles written in Catalan reach half of the total. Also
during the Second Republic the booklets of the resumed scientific
itineraries were added to the Butlletí. At the start of the Civil
War the Butlletí of the second trimester of 1936 could still be
edited; the following number had to wait until 1949 to be published. The
first volume of the new era of the Butlletí appeared in 1974 and it
is currently published annually.
From here you can enter directly to the
The Butlletí
in the Library catalogue .
·
"Butlletí de la Institució Catalana
d'Història Natural". Gran enciclopèdia catalana. Ed. 1989.
·
Institució Catalana d'Història Natural.
Breu història de la Institució Catalana d'Història Natural. On line. Internet.. Accessible at
http://www.iec.es/institucio/societats/ICHistoriaNatural/història.htm
(Consulted 7-Feb.-2003).
.
Exchange institutions
As explained in the section on the
description of the collection, together with the donation the University
of Girona also accepted to take responsibility for the exchanges that the
ICHN had had with institutions from all over the world through its
Butlletí. The UdG already had existing exchanges with some of those
institutions, but not with many others. Some of their names are: l'Academia
Nacional de Ciencias de Argentina, l'Istituto Nazionale per la Fauna
Selvatica "Alessandro Ghigi", el Natural History Museum of Los Angeles
County i el Museu Nacional de la Ciència de Tòquio.
Following is a
complete list of the institutions organised
by country.
Selections from the
press
- Biblioteca.
Notícies de la Institució: circular de la Institució Catalana d'Història Natural (núm. 30, juliol-agost de 2000).
-
Biblioteca.
Notícies de la Institució: circular de la Institució Catalana d'Història Natural
(núm. 44, novembre-desembre de 2002).
-
Marques de Biblioteca. Revista de Girona (núm. 234,
gener-febrer de 2006).
