On April 24, 2019 at Marimurtra Botanical Garden’s iconic ‘Linnaeus Temple’, the director of the University of Girona’s library, Ángeles Merino, and vice-chancellor of the UdG, Josep Daunis, presented a collaboration agreement between the Private Foundation Carl Faust and the Library of the University of Girona.
The agreement makes the books and documents of Carl Faust’s private library available to the general public, as well as researchers and scholars. This collection consists of about 1,700 works, both històric and contemporary, focused on environmental sciences, ecology, plant conservation, landscape design and landscape architecture, horticulture, floriculture and flora from around the world, especially from the Mediterranean area.
This important bibliographical collection aims to promote research and documentation on the various botanical collections of Marimurtra, as well as to facilitate the study of researchers who spend time in the Garden.
This agreement, will help us to make this significant library fully accesible via search catalogs from different libraries worldwide, such as the University of Girona.
Additionally, thanks to the collaboration, decades of correspondence that Carl Faust kept with botanists of his time will also be visible, such as José Cuatrecasas, Miquel Aldrufeu and Carlos Pou, as well as letters he exchanged with one of his disciples, Ramon Margalef. This digitization process will make it possible for citizens and researchers to view the hitherto unpublished documents on the network.
Finally, this agreement is of mutual benefit to both entities. On the one hand, by extending the bibliographic catalog of the Library of Girona with a collection of books providing great value both for their antiquity and their rarity; and on the other hand, the visibility and prestige granted to the Private Foundation Carl Faust, which for the first time, makes available to the public the private collection of its founder, Carl Faust (1874 to 1952).