{"id":118041,"date":"2013-05-15T16:11:36","date_gmt":"2013-05-15T19:11:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/?p=118041"},"modified":"2013-05-15T16:11:36","modified_gmt":"2013-05-15T19:11:36","slug":"portraits-of-brazil","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/portraits-of-brazil\/","title":{"rendered":"Portraits of Brazil"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"The

L\u00e9o Ramos<\/span>The interior of the library reproduces the way the books were organized at Mindlin\u2019s houseL\u00e9o Ramos<\/span><\/p><\/div>\n

On March 23, 2013, the University of S\u00e3o Paulo (USP) inaugurated the B\u00edblioteca Brasiliana Guita e Jos\u00e9 Mindlin <\/i>(Guita and Jos\u00e9 Mindlin Brasiliana Library), designed to house 32,000 titles from the Brasiliana collection donated in 2006 by the businessman and his wife. The event, attended by more than 500 guests, including officials, sponsors, and intellectuals, also opened two exhibits to the public. The first, which will be permanent, displays photos and other materials about the lives of the Mindlins and their efforts to build the library, and summarizes the history of books and the press. The second, which will be open to the public until June\u00a028, exhibits 100 of the most treasured items from the collection. These are books and manuscripts, such as the original manuscript for Vidas Secas<\/i> (Barren Lives) <\/i>by Graciliano Ramos. Since 2009, a portion of the collection has undergone the process of digitization and is now offered on the Internet. Currently the digital library has about 3,600 titles that can be accessed on the Brasiliana USP website (www.brasiliana.usp.br<\/a>) operated by the Mindlin Library.<\/p>\n

Bibliophile Jos\u00e9 Mindlin (1914-2010) who, besides being a prominent businessman in the auto parts industry, was also an attorney and journalist, began collecting old books in 1927. On the shelves of his private library one could find rare works from the 16th<\/sup> century and others about Brazilian and Portuguese literature, as well as manuscripts, scientific journals, and periodicals about art. Mindlin often invited to his home friends and researchers who were fascinated by the chance to visit the collection. Mindlin\u2019s wife Guita, who died in 2006, was responsible for preserving it. S\u00e9rgio Mindlin, the couple\u2019s son, recalled with visible emotion at the inauguration ceremony his parents\u2019 devotion to the library. \u201cWhile they were alive, the library was their world. Now it\u2019s become institutional and accessible in ways once unthinkable, through vast research and study facilities and access to the Internet,\u201d he said. Sergio and his three sisters serve on the board of directors of the institution.<\/p>\n

USP Chancellor Jo\u00e3o Grandino Rodas emphasized the significance of the donation by Mindlin and his family. \u201cBrazil lacks this tradition of making donations, the process is not simple, but here the seed has been planted so that others may make the same gesture,\u201d the chancellor said in speaking to Ag\u00eancia USP de Not\u00edcias<\/i>. The inauguration also honored the memory of historian Istv\u00e1n Jancs\u00f3, one of the mentors of the USP Brasiliana Project, who died in 2010.<\/p>\n

\"The

L\u00e9o Ramos<\/span>The external structure that houses the collectionL\u00e9o Ramos<\/span><\/p><\/div>\n

Celso Lafer, president of FAPESP, said that \u201cdigitization means not only preservation, but also widespread access and the possibility of expanding the information.\u201d The Foundation was responsible for purchasing the robot-driven equipment needed to digitize bound books, and nicknamed the device Maria Bonita<\/i> (reference to one half of the pair of outlaws known in backlands folklore as Maria Bonita and Lampi\u00e3o<\/i>). The machine can photograph as many as 2,400 pages an hour, which represents about 40 books a day (see Pesquisa FAPESP<\/i> issue no. 161).<\/p>\n

Literary critic Antonio Candido said his friend Jos\u00e9 Mindlin was not just a book collector. \u201cAbove all, he was a reader who was endowed with a facility for critical judgment, a sort of author of his library,\u201d said Candido. Historian Boris Fausto, who also attended the opening of the library, emphasized the Mindlin couple\u2019s determination to make the collection available to the public. \u201cIt\u2019s important to emphasize the generosity shown by the Mindlins in donating a library of this size and value, as well as the role of the family, whose action ratified the gesture made by their parents.\u201d The library building, which includes USP\u2019s Institute for Brazilian Studies and its Integrated Library System, cost R$130 million to build. Some of the funds came from USP, but the project also received help from sponsors like Petrobras and the Brazilian Development Bank (BNDES).<\/p>\n

S\u00e3o Paulo Mayor Fernando Haddad said that Mindlin\u2019s example may encourage similar initiatives. \u201cI hope this attitude opens a new frontier for dialogue between leading businessmen and educational institutions,\u201d he declared. Recently returned from a trip to museums and libraries in the United States, Minister of Culture Marta Suplicy said the new USP building is certainly on a par with international standards. She also pointed out that a new Copyright Law is soon to be submitted to Congress, in order to permit further digitizations, such as those being done by Brasiliana, to be made available. \u201cOtherwise, it will not be possible to offer access to all the works unless they are in the public domain,\u201d she explained. S\u00e3o Paulo State Secretary of Culture Marcelo Mattos Ara\u00fajo, attending as representative of Governor Geraldo Alckmin, also hailed the initiative of the Mindlin Library.<\/p>\n

\"The

L\u00e9o Ramos<\/span>The original version of Vidas Secas that shows the title as revised by Graciliano RamosL\u00e9o Ramos<\/span><\/p><\/div>\n

Benefits for Research
\n<\/b>Ever since digitization began, researchers have benefited from the transfer of works to the computer screen. \u201cThe Digital Brasiliana Library project is one of the most important for the field of human sciences in Brazil,\u201d says Jaime Rodrigues, a professor in the Department of History at the Federal University of S\u00e3o Paulo (Unifesp). In the Mindlin library he found travel reports that helped flesh out his research on the maritime culture of the ships that passed through Brazilian waters between the 16th<\/sup> and 19th<\/sup> centuries. \u201cI was able to find only a few works in other libraries, but a good number were found, in their original versions, on the Brasiliana website,\u201d Rodrigues says.<\/p>\n

Pedro Puntoni, director of the Mindlin Library, says that access to books in their physical form will require extra precautions. Researchers will have to register with the library and ask to be put on the schedule. That will require a decision from the library\u2019s curators, who will examine the condition of the requested book and decide how it can be consulted. \u201cBut access will remain open over the Internet, within the limits of copyright.\u201d Puntoni, a professor at the USP School of Philosophy, Language and Literature, and Human Sciences, explains that the library has already formed partnerships with international institutions, primarily those that have collections of works on Brazil, such as the Oliveira Lima Library in Washington DC and the John Carter Brown Library in Rhode Island, both in the United States. \u201cWe will be able to offer those libraries free access to works that interest them and, in return, they can provide us, in digital form, books that we don\u2019t have,\u201d he says. Consultations were also held with Beatriz Haspo, Collections Officer at the Library of Congress, in Washington DC, who discussed conservation and preservation. \u201cThe library will forge new international partnerships because it is a living thing, an open institution that intends to serve as a center for Brazilian culture in connection with other institutions,\u201d he concludes.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Library housing the Jos\u00e9 Mindlin collection inaugurated at USP","protected":false},"author":421,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[166],"tags":[226],"coauthors":[740],"class_list":["post-118041","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-policies-st-en","tag-education"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/118041","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/421"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=118041"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/118041\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=118041"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=118041"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=118041"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=118041"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}