The Archive of the Instituto Histórico e Geográfico Brasileiro in Rio

This week I am exploring the collection at the Instituto Historico e Geografico Brasileiro (IHGB) in Rio de Janeiro.  This past month I have been busy with class preparations and a paper on the internal slave market for LASA, but I am finally back to the Era of Epidemics project.  Anyway, the IHGB was founded in 1838 and is one of the oldest research and document preservation institutions in Brazil. They have a website, but because their catalog isn’t online, you can only find out what they have by going up to their 10^th floor reading room. As I had hoped, their collection of nineteenth century material is quite good. I came across a number of texts that I have not found elsewhere, including in Don Cooper’s enormous collection. I have compiled a list, available here, on documents and books relating to the history of medicine and health in the nineteenth century held by the IHGB.

The IHGB is in easy walking distance from the Biblioteca Nacional and I recommend that anyone doing serious research in the BN also stop by the IHGB to see what they might have that is not in the National Library. One drawback: they do not allow digitization. I asked Pedro Tórtima, one of their main librarians, if they have a reproduction service. He said that they will make a copy of a recent book but charge 25 reis ($13) per page! In other words, bring your notebook and leave your camera at home.

Para Português, clique aqui:

Update on Wednesday, June 24, 2009 at 6:23AM by Ian Read

I discovered that they might be persuaded to xerox at a price lower than what I quoted above, but this requires getting to know the archivists a little bit. They won't xerox old, fragile documents (which is good). There seems to be an "informal" way of getting the copying done.  Ah, Brazil, the land of the "jeitinho."