ENGLISH
THAI
INDONESIAN
JAPANESE
FILIPINO

by Oona Thommes Paredes

Oona Paredes is completing her Ph.D. in Anthropology at Arizona State University

page 1
page 2
page 3
page 4
page 5
page 6
page 7

Cathedral and the Reales Alcázares. As such, researchers in the AGI listen to the klop-klop of horse-drawn carriages, the bustle of tourists, and the revving of automobiles all day long.

As with the AGI, there is a special residence for visiting scholars close to the AHN. Even those who are no longer students can stay at the Residencia de Estudiantes, and you can find the necessary information through their website at http://www.residencia.csic.es/. For those staying elsewhere in Madrid, the archive is a relatively long block from the nearest Metro stop (República Argentina on the no6 grey line), but it is a pleasant walk.

Private Archives

The archives described below are open to the public and free of charge, but are considered “private” because they are not financed or run by government officials. As such, you will need to make your own arrangements with each individual archive, but as their mandates are similar to those of public libraries, researchers need not do anything in advance unless they are applying for in-house grants or are requesting special workplace accommodations. The exception is the archive of the Augustinian Recollects, for the simple reason that there is only one very busy archivist, and if he is away on business, no one will be able to help you, and you will have traveled all the way to the foot of the Pyrenees for nothing.

The Vatican Film Library (St. Louis University, St. Louis, Missouri, U.S.A.)

The Vatican Film Library is located inside the Pius XII Memorial Library on the lovely campus of St. Louis University (SLU), a private Jesuit school located in the midwestern United States (not to be confused with the actual Vatican Library in Rome). The Film Library contains no original manuscripts but microfilm copies of materials from other Jesuit repositories, including their Roman archive. Through their website, http://www.slu.edu/libraries/vfl, you can learn more about their collections and the fellowship options for out-of-town researchers. They do not have an online catalog.

Philippinists will be interested in two collections, both of which are extensive. The first is the Archivum Romanum Societatis Iesu or ARSI collection, which contains administrative records from the Jesuit Generalate in Rome. There is material from every administrative region or Assistancy, including the Spanish Assistancy, under which records of the Philippine Province can be found. In their bound catalog, look under Assistentia Hispaniae > Provincia Philippinarum. There are 12 ARSI microfilm rolls pertaining to the Philippines, including some with interesting but brief biographies – in Spanish – of Jesuit missionaries who served in the

Philippines. But most of the rest of the ARSI is in either Latin or Italian, the languages of the Vatican, and my very limited knowledge of these languages prevented me from learning much from this collection.

The second, of greater interest, is the Pastells collection, which is essentially a microfilm copy of the original Pastells collection housed in the grand Catalonian archive of the Jesuit order, the Archivum Historicum Societatis Iesu Cataloniae (AHSIC) in Sant Cugat del Vallés, Barcelona. Hidalgo’s description of the AHSIC’s Pastells documents (pages 267-273 of the Guía de Fuentes) of course applies to its duplicate in the Vatican Film Library. In brief, the Pastells collection is comprised of transcriptions made by Pablo Pastells, S.J., at the turn of the 20th century, of primary sources found mostly in the AGI in Sevilla, but also a few from the AHN, the Archivo General de Simancas (Valladolid), the Biblioteca Nacional (Madrid), the Real Academia de la Historia (Madrid), and various Jesuit archives. In the course of undertaking this project, which was primarily about the history of the Jesuit order, Pastells transcribed documents pertaining to the political and ecclesiastical history of the Philippines. Pastells himself had worked as a missionary in the Philippines in the late 19th century, serving eastern Mindanao for over a decade. The larger collection has considerable coverage of the Americas, as well as the Marianas, China, and everywhere else the Jesuits traveled in Asia.

Pastells’s transcriptions were first done by hand, then later by typewriter. But in both cases, no “corrections” were made to modernize what was being transcribed. In other words, the original orthography, abbreviations, and flow of the source documents are preserved. Most of the source documents themselves already contain an expedited version of the main document, or a précis of its contents on the first page. But Pastells adds his own fairly accurate index at the beginning of each volume, which makes the Pastells transcriptions a valuable, practical resource to train would-be archival researchers. For the Philippines, there are about 23 volumes on 8 densely packed microfilm rolls, and four weeks of full-time work was not enough for me to read and take notes on every document.

The Vatican Film Library is a sadly under-utilized resource in terms of Philippine historical studies, and I was told in 2004 that I was the first person to check out the Pastells microfilm collection in a very long time. That said, you can be sure that fellowship applications for research about the Philippines will be eagerly considered by the library.

There are some practical issues with regard to using the microfilm collection at the VFL. The first is that their machines are so old, they look like Soviet-era

contraptions and will feel awkward if you are used to modern microfilm readers. That said, they are purely mechanical, using only a hand crank, and therefore do not require any special training and are less likely to break down. However, the text is not quite as clear in these older machines, possibly because of an inferior light source. The second issue is that these old machines are not connected to any printers. However, on the second floor of the Pius XII Memorial Library, you will find about six modern microfilm readers, four of which are connected to rudimentary printers, and two of which are connected to scanners. You will of course need explicit permission to take the microfilm out of the VFL reading room.

You can use either coins or copy cards (available on the main floor) to pay the per-page printing fee. If you want to retain reference copies of more than a few pages, however, you have the option of using the Minolta scanners to read the microfilm and convert the images into a PDF document, which you can then save and take home on a portable storage device, such as a floppy disk, ZIP disk, or USB drive. In my case, I would load the scanned documents onto a removable USB drive until it was full, then download its contents into my laptop’s hardrive, and then use my CD burner to create a backup. Then I would empty my USB drive and return to the Minoltas to scan some more documents.

Of course, you will need to ask one of the librarians to show you how to use these machines, which are splendid but tricky. When I was there, they did not have any CD burners on the library’s computers. But technology always changes, and as I write this, it has been over a year since I used their machines; I recommend calling first to verify what recording options are currently available.

St. Louis, Missouri, is easily accessible by air and car, and a range of local accommodations is available, including SLU’s in-house hotel, the Water Tower Inn. You can find some very basic information through their website at http://www.slu.edu/events/wti.html, but you’ll need to call for their rates. Although the Water Tower Inn is relatively economical and there is a considerable discount for long-term stays, I suggest calling the VFL secretary in advance to ask about other options. I started out at the Water Tower Inn, but courtesy of the VFL secretary, I was pleased to move to a closer and much cheaper apartment being sublet for visitors by the Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies. The university’s cafeteria and a student center with various food service options are both within a two minute walk of the library. The VFL itself is currently located in an odd corner on the ground floor of the Pius XII library, and the environmental controls in that room only seem to work at full blast. In the summer, it will be freezing, no matter where you sit: bring a sweater, warm socks, and maybe even a scarf.

The Newberry Library (Chicago, Illinois, U.S.A.)

The Newberry Library is another profoundly under-appreciated and under-utilized resource for Philippine history and ethnology. It is a treasure trove of books, manuscripts, maps, and pictures, all of which are potentially relevant to a wide range of research. It has a very special connection to the Philippines in the form of the Ayer Collection, which was originally assembled at the very beginning of the American occupation. Many of the Ayer materials are unique, salvaged from the Barcelona library of the Compañía General de Tabacos. There are excellent materials dating from the latter half of the 18th century until the Revolution. There are hundreds of photographs from the Dean Worcester and other collections. From the Spanish period, there is an assortment of manuscripts and booklets on the religious missions, the British invasion of Manila, and various explorations of the archipelago and their accompanying maps. Newberry also has accounts of early explorations of the New World and the Philippines, including a reportedly contemporary copy, in manuscript form, of an eyewitness account of Legazpi’s arrival in the Philippines in 1565. A very large portion of Blair & Robertson’s 55-volume compendium The Philippine Islands 1493-1898 is comprised of translations from materials in the Ayer collection, which underscores the breadth and significance of this collection.

Rizalians will be delighted to know that there is a precious handful of correspondence by our dear José Rizal. This includes a sparsely filled notebook in which he wrote down how much he spent on food and other expenses in Madrid, and in which he laments on March 31st (the same day he spent 1,20 pesetas in stamps to mail a letter to the Philippines) that, “My days pass with speed and I find that I am very old (they call me this a lot) for my age; I lack the joy of young hearts...” Filipinos overcome by homesickness while at the Newberry can take comfort in the bust of Rizal that watches over the Special Collections reading room. The reading room itself is a very pleasant and quiet place, and in late 2004 there was talk of providing internet access from there, which would make it easier to cross-reference the library’s catalog as you work. The staff is incredibly efficient, helpful, and accommodating, but every archive has its conventions and procedures. To stay in their good graces, do memorize the in-house rules (no pens, etc.) and observe them diligently.