WHAT IS THE ARCHIVO DIGITAL VALLE-INCLÁN/USC?
The archivo digital valle-inclán is the result of more than twenty years of work carried out by the Grupo de Investigación Valle-Inclán de la Universidad de Santiago de Compostela (GIVIUS). Since 1994 this research has been carried out under the direction of Margarita Santos Zas, with successive R+D+i projects, subsidized by the Ministry of Education and Science, Ministry of Science and Innovation, Ministry of Economy, Industry and Competitiveness/European Regional Development Fund (ERDF) and the Xunta de Galicia.
The bibliographic and documentary collection of GIVIUS, which is the origin and support of the archivo digital valle-inclán, is the product of the gradual acquisition of the author's works published during his lifetime, currently in the USC Library (BUSC) and the persistent hemerographic research in local, national and international libraries. This research has allowed us to compile an extensive typology of textual, iconographic and graphic material, which is essential in reconstructing or documenting Valle-Inclán’s biographical episodes of, his aesthetic and political thought, the peculiar process of writing and publication of his works, as well as plotting the trajectory and position of the Valle-Inclanian production in the literary field of his time.
The printed corpus (bibliography and documentation) of the Galician writer, compiled by GIVIUS, is made up of approximately 4,500 documents ―more than 80% come from the press of the day―, which have been converted into digital images (a task carried out under the direction of Javier Serrano Alonso, who headed the INCITE09 263 078PR project), exceed the figure of 80,000. The systematization and exploitation of this corpus, the main objective of GIVIUS, required the start-up of a database and the development of a web tool that would allow the cataloging, visualization, consultation and export of the information contained. The aim was to make the documentation to speak for itself and respond to all kinds of issues related to the life and work of Valle-Inclán. Issues such as:
- How many editions of Sonata de Primavera are there?
- What are the editions and the texts or press fragments of Flor de Santidad?
- What titles were published in the Opera Omnia?
- In what journalistic publications, author’s editions and anthologies was the story “El miedo” published?
- Who translated Valle-Inclán?
- With whom did he exchange letters on any given date?
- What texts were included in any anthologies?
- What interviews did he grant to a certain writer and/or journalist?
- What texts were translated?
- What letters did he send to his wife or friends?
- Which Argentine publications collect texts of the writer in an arc of determined dates?
- What texts and how often did they appear on the literary page of El Imparcial?
- Where and what lectures did he give?
- Who painted his portrait?
- What illustrations of El Embrujado were used to illustrate other titles?
And a long etcetera of questions which the archivo digital valle-inclán can provide full answers to.
The database that supports the archivo digital valle-inclán is the implementation of a complex conceptual data model, formalized in an Entity-Relationship Diagram (ERD), which describes:
- The printed documentation and iconographic reception of Valle-Inclán between 1888 and 1936: editions and issues of his works, creation texts published in the press, articles, forewords, translations, interviews, lectures, speeches, letters, caricatures, portraits, photographs and illustrations of his works.
- The network of relationships woven by the writer in the development of his literary, social, political and cultural activity, with the «agents» —editors, translators, authors, foreword writers, dedicatees, addressees, public letter signatories, journalists, interviewers, illustrators, caricaturists, portraitist, photographers, caricatured, painted, photographed— and «organisations» — institutions, publishing houses, printing houses, newspapers and magazines.
Therefore, beyond the primary documentation of the writer’s literary works, this complex model offers valuable relational information, extracted from the data model from the previous research work of the academic team, which is a key element in shaping the multifaceted figure of the writer, analysing his position and career in the literary field of the time, and opening the research around the Silver Age in other directions.
The archivo digital valle-inclán is not, therefore, merely a repository or digital library of the writer's work, but a powerful research resource, thanks to the data modeling and the implemented Advanced Search, which among other possibilities, in a query enables the user to obtain the textual history of a work —essential information to make a critical edition—; track matches; or to visualize the network of relationships woven by the writer with the consigned agents and organisations. Hence the aspiration to create a model of a «Digital Author Archive», that is, a model of preservation and exploitation of an author archive, a reference work both for specialists and researchers, teachers, students, and anyone interested in the Galician writer and his time.