Bibliographies

Four teams of scholars, working on medieval Spanish, Catalan, Galician and Portuguese literature, and on Spanish Golden Age poetry, use PhiloBiblon to create bio-bibliographical databases of the respective corpora:

BETA Bibliografía Española de Textos Antiguos (Charles B. Faulhaber, Ángel Gómez Moreno, Antonio Cortijo Ocaña, Óscar Perea Rodríguez, María Morrás, Álvaro Bustos Táuler, Nicasio Salvador Miguel; Ángela Moll, † Brian Dutton, David Mackenzie, John Nitti, Anthony Cárdenas, Jean Gilkison)

BIPA Bibliografía de Poesía Áurea (Ralph A. DiFranco and José J. Labrador Herraiz)

BITAGAP Bibliografia de Textos Antigos Galegos e Portugueses (Arthur L-F. Askins, Harvey L. Sharrer, † Aida Fernanda Dias, Martha E. Schaffer, Cristina Sobral, Pedro Pinto, Filipe Alves Moreira, Mariña Arbor Aldea, Maria de Lurdes Rosa)

BITECA Bibliografia de Textos Antics Catalans, Valencians i Balears (Vicenç Beltran i Pepió, Gemma Avenoza i Vera, Lourdes Soriano i Robles, † Beatrice Concheff)

While the basic parameters of each bibliography are similar—a bio-bibliographical listing of the texts and sources contained in their respective corpora—the specific details vary from one to another. Thus in BETA and BITAGAP the general cut-off date of composition for listed texts is 1501, while for BITECA it is the death of Ferdinand the Catholic (Ferran II) in 1516. For more information see the home page for each bibliography.

Because the interests and resources of each team have varied, there are considerable differences in emphasis among the various bibliographies. BITECA and BITAGAP have the most comprehensive coverage of texts, including all legal texts and all lyric poetry, as well as the most exhaustive secondary bibliography. BITECA has the most detailed codicological descriptions, followed by BETA. BETA is perhaps the least complete in its coverage of the texts, with most of the lyric poetry yet to be added. BIPA has concentrated almost exclusively on the creation of a first-line index of Golden Age Poetry.

Almost all of the manuscripts and printed editions in BITAGAP and BITECA have been described first hand by members of the respective teams. For BETA, which began on the basis of second-hand descriptions, the bulk of the material has yet to be examined first hand; and its bibliographical references do not attempt to be comprehensive, focusing on manuscript catalogs, codicological studies of individual manuscripts, editions of texts, biographical studies, and similar works. In contrast to BITAGAP, BETA, BIPA, and BITECA, omit critical studies almost entirely, which can be found in the annual bibliography published in the Boletín Bibliográfico of the Asociación Hispánica de Literatura Medieval .

There has been little concerted attempt to coordinate data among the four teams. Discrepancies will be found, for example, in the titles of texts originally written in Latin and in the names of individuals. In the case of translations from one Iberian language into another, however, the team describing the translated text tends to defer to the expertise of the team dealing with the original. There has been no systematic attempt to copy all of the information from the authority files of one bibliography into those of another.

Conventions for the descriptions of manuscripts and printed editions and for the transcriptions of incipits and explicits also vary from bibliography to bibliography. For all of these elements consult the home page of the relevant bibliography.