Collections and exhibitions
The oldest distinguishable book collection in the botanical section of the library, which belonged to the prefect of the Botanical Garden, Giovanni Marsili, a man of wide-ranging interests and a passionate bibliophile. It includes manuscripts, printed texts, incunabula and editio princeps, collections of illustrated prints.
Dried herbaria are collections of real plants subjected to a drying process and then glued with various methods (glue, tape, pins...) onto sheets that can then be bound together or left loose and collected in a folder. The library preserves twenty dried herbaria bound in the form of a codex (most of them from the 18th century) and a loose-leaf herbarium from the second half of the 18th century.
The library maintains a historical collection of ‘Index Seminum’, seed catalogues of plants grown in a botanical garden. These catalogues are shared with other botanical gardens for information and to enable the exchange of seeds.
The collection includes the books, some manuscripts, and documents of Vincenzo Malacarne (1744-1816) and his sons Gaetano Malacarne (1779-1832) and Claro Giuseppe Malacarne (1774-1828).
The collection includes numerous volumes that belonged to the prefect Roberto De Visiani's personal library: classics of botany and medicine, some in precious antique editions, but also titles that testify to his interest in fossils and palaeobotany. Alongside these, numerous manuscripts relating to his studies and publications are preserved.
The Marco Fanno collection is made up of around 1500 volumes from his personal library and an archive collection of his handwritten notes, which cover forty-five years of his research activity.
The journal Memoirs of Geological Sciences began publication in 1912, vol. 1, edited by Prof. Giorgio Dal Piaz and his collaborators, in order to popularize the scientific geological and paleontological works of the Veneto Region. It ceased in 2004 with vol. 55.
The library holds historical collections and miscellanies concerning geology and paleontology mostly from the 19th century from bequests and donations. The material can be consulted on the premises and is partially catalogued.
The Historical Section safekeeps the oldest part of the monographic holdings of the Psychology Library.
Antique and Rare books of the library
