Benedikz Collection of Icelandic Literature
RSLP (Research Support Libraries Programme) award (2001-2002) as part of EGIL (Electronic Gateway to Icelandic Literature) project
The Icelandic library of the scholar and diplomat Eiríkur Benedikz (1907-1988) was given to the University of Nottingham in 1998, and subsequently enhanced by further gifts from his son, Dr Benedikt Benedikz.
Although the University Library already had considerable strengths in the area of Icelandic literature, cataloguing this substantial collection required the dedicated attention over a considerable period of somebody with appropriate specialist language skills. An additional factor encouraging a ‘special project’ approach was the need to make the material available as soon as possible in support of the University’s active teaching and research programmes in Viking Studies.
When in 2001 the University Library was awarded a grant as the lead site for a collaborative project to establish a gateway to Icelandic literature (the EGIL Project), the cataloguing of the Benedikz Collection became an element within the larger programme.
The project was completed in 2002. Over 2,500 records were created, about 800 of them describing titles within the reserved Benedikz Special Collections. These catalogue records are now available on the Library's online catalogue (UNLOC).
In addition, work from the project supported the mounting of an exhibition about the Library’s Icelandic holdings, a selected element of which is now available as an online exhibition, and an information leaflet about Icelandic literature in the University Library. Several items from the collection were included among the texts made available in digital form as part of the EGIL programme.
A general collection level description of the Benedikz Collection provides more background information to the collection and further detail about its subject strengths.
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