Immediate Cataloging
The donation of books to a major research library is not normally an instantaneous process. Donated materials must be received, assessed, processed and catalogued, and, given the enormous volume of material handled by institutions such as the Library of Congress, the process may take weeks or even months.
In October 2019, however, something quite unusual happened with two of my books.
The books were:
Daniel Piedrabuena Ruiz-Tagle, El conquistador alemán Pedro Lísperguer Wittemberg: de cortesano de Carlos V y Felipe II a célebre precursor de Chile.
ISBN
9788494671388
and
Daniel Piedrabuena Ruiz-Tagle, Los Lísperguer Wittemberg: una familia alemana en el corazón de la cultura chilena: identidad y esplendor de la primera familia colonial de Chile.
ISBN
9788494671395
The Letter from the Library of Congress
On October 15, 2019 , at 3:29 p.m. , I received a letter from Carlos J. Olave, Head of the Hispanic Reading Room of the Hispanic Division of the Library of Congress , informing me that the Library had received the two books I had donated.
The wording of the letter is particularly striking. After confirming their receipt, Olave wrote:
“Ahora mismo voy al departamento de Adquisiciones y Catalogación para entregarlos y exigir que los cataloguen inmediatamente.”
The important words are “exigir” and “inmediatamente.”
He did not merely say that he would pass the books on to another department. He stated that he was going immediately to Acquisitions and Cataloging to deliver them and insist that they be catalogued immediately .
The MARC Records: October 15, 2019
At the time, this could naturally have been understood as a courteous expression of interest. Years later, however, the MARC records preserved by the Library of Congress allow us to compare the letter with the institution's own bibliographic metadata.
The result is remarkable.
The MARC record for El conquistador alemán Pedro Lísperguer Wittemberg contains:
008: 191015 — October 15, 2019, the date associated with the creation of the bibliographic record.
Its 955 field , which preserves internal processing information, records:
October 15, 2019 → October 17, 2019 → October 21, 2019 → November 22, 2019.
The MARC record for Los Lísperguer Wittemberg likewise contains:
008: 191015 — October 15, 2019.
Its 955 field records:
October 15, 2019 → October 17, 2019 → November 6, 2019 → December 19, 2019 → January 27, 2020.
The significance of this is difficult to overlook.
Both books entered the Library of Congress's bibliographic processing workflow on October 15, 2019 — the very day on which the Library informed me that it had received them and on which Olave stated that he was going immediately to Acquisitions and Cataloging to “exigir que los cataloguen inmediatamente.”
This is an unusually close chronological correspondence between contemporary documentary evidence and institutional bibliographic metadata.
It would be excessive to claim that the entire cataloguing process was completed within a few hours. The subsequent entries in the MARC records clearly show that different stages of processing continued over the following weeks and months.
But something can be established with considerably greater certainty:
the cataloguing process began on the very day the two books were received.
And this happened not with one book, but with both donated books.
Why Were They Processed with Such Unusual Promptness?
Of course, we cannot know with certainty what passed through the mind of the person who received them. But two substantial hardcover volumes of more than 600 pages each, representing seventeen years of research , could hardly have gone unnoticed. Even a superficial browsing of their contents would have revealed the scope and ambition of the project, and probably also the depth and scholarly character of the material. The institutional endorsements and validations displayed on the books would also have reinforced this first impression.
It is therefore reasonable to suppose that, upon seeing the two volumes, Olave quickly perceived that he was not dealing with an ordinary donation, but with the result of an unusually extensive historical investigation — something that may help explain the unusual promptness of his reaction, including his decision to take them personally to Acquisitions and Cataloging and to “exigir que los cataloguen inmediatamente.”
Letter from Carlos J. Olave, Head of the Hispanic Reading Room, Hispanic Division, Library of Congress, October 15, 2019.
The Value of Recognition
Whatever the precise reason, the documentary sequence remains striking.
The letter says:
“exigir” — “inmediatamente.”
The MARC records say:
October 15, 2019.
The letter and the institutional metadata therefore tell the same story from two different perspectives.
For a researcher and author, there is something particularly satisfying about discovering, years later, that a contemporary letter can be checked against the Library's own bibliographic records — and that those records preserve the trace of what happened.
The two books were received by the Library of Congress on October 15, 2019, and the bibliographic processing of both began that same day.
For me personally, this episode represents much more than a bibliographic curiosity. These books were the result of seventeen years of research , study and sustained effort, involving extensive work in archives, libraries and historical collections, as well as numerous journeys throughout Spain in search of documents and evidence that would allow me to reconstruct the history of the Lísperguer Wittemberg family, whose historical legacy lies at the roots of one of Latin America’s great literary and cultural myths: La Quintrala.
To see those years of research acknowledged, in this very particular way, by one of the world's great research libraries is a profound honor.
After seventeen years devoted to research, countless hours of study, archival work and travel throughout Spain, seeing these works enter the collections of the Library of Congress — and seeing that their processing began on the very day they were received — represents for me a deeply meaningful form of recognition.
It is, without a doubt, an honor that I value enormously and receive with humility.
