The project
What is Edisco?
Edisco is a database whose aim is to carry out a census of books for school and education published between 1800 and today. It is part of a national research project on scholastic publishing which involves 6 italian universities: Bologna, Florence, Padova, Turin, Macerata, Udine, and a number of researchers committed in the home territory. The aim is to construct a catalogue of scholastic and pedagogical books edited in our peninsula between the 19th and the 20th century, procuring the material both in libraries and in antiques and modern bibliographic repertories. At the moment Edisco counts over 20.000 titles, procured in different bibliographic repertories. (CLIO, CUBI, SBN, Stella Catalogue).Their suggestion have been , in some cases, integrated with analysis in the library. In addition to the physical description of the manual, Edisco wants to give directions about the content of the book through the re-edition and by mentioning the subject dealt with, the kind of school and the class it was directed to and its editorial fortune.
What is Edisco for?
Edisco wants to give an extensive and solid documentary grounding to different kinds of historical/educational researches. .Actually, the book for the school and the scholastic publishing is a tool of great interest for the historical research because of its position at the meeting point between different competences and subjects, from the ones investigating typical editorial phenomenons to the literary and cultural ones and, still, to the scholastic and pedagogical ones . To study the book, and to get information about who wrote it and who printed it, means to reach a privileged point of view thanks to which it is possible to deepen different phenomenons, such as: the procedures through which the world book trade reached, between the nineteenth and the twentieth century, modern levels in the company activity thanks also to the multiplication of scholastic books; the marketing strategies adopted, always waving between the local and national dimension, to obtain new spaces where to catch on; the level of mediation between the learned and the scholastic culture; the connection between the scholastic organization and the use of the manual. To study the scholastic book, from a social, educational and pedagogical point of view, means as well to get access to an important source for the reconstruction of the scholastic life, of new concepts of childhood and school, of the relation between educational models and the culture for the use of the school, of the knowledge and subjects history and of the didactic practices.
The team
The team that works for Edisco has for many years been researching sources for the school history: in 1997, it brought to an end the census of pedagogical and scholastic periodicals published in Italy between 1820 and 1943.It organized them into a catalogue titled "La stampa pedagogica e scolastica in Italia" (1820-1943) (Brescia, La Scuola, 1997), which collects 1273 records of as many educational registers. The same team had begun to collect information about the publishing houses, starting from the ones dated back to the nineteenth century. The firsts results of these studies were registered in the proceedings of a meeting that took place in Turin in May 1999. Those proceedings were collected and published by G. Chiosso in a book titled “il libro per la scuola in Italia tra Sette e Ottocento”(La Scuola, Brescia, 2000). In 2003, thanks to the Bibliogaphic publishing house of Milan, came to the light TESEO, the catalogue of Scholastic and Educational Typographer Editors of the nineteenth century. It collects 601 records of as many Italian editorial realities which had produced scholastic manuals and educational and pedagogical books between 1800 and 1899.
