THE B.IN.G.

The Fondation B.IN.G. Bibliotheque Internationale de Gastronomie arose out of the enthusiasm of a group of scholars and of devotees of gastronomic culture, brought together through the initiative and drive of Orazio Bagnasco, who is the President. The Fondation is obviously non-profit-making and its purpose is to guarantee the conservation, cataloguing and amplification of the bibliographical heritage, which through an attentive and serious policy of acquisition has gradually been formed over the years, and all this valuable material is made available to scholars.
So as to enable direct access to this material the B.IN.G. is endowed with a reading-room open to scholars, specialists in the field and journalists, and with computers, monitors and bibliographical equipment, by means of which it is hoped that researchers will be able to expand the sphere of their enquires.
The various collections gathered in the B.IN.G. form a Library of c3500 books, printed and in manuscript, in Italian, Latin, French, German, English, Spanish, Portuguese, Russian, Japanese, Chinese and Dutch, produced in the period stretching from the XIV century to midnight of December 31,1899.
In the B.IN.G. gastronomy is understood in a wide and detailed sense as to include texts on diet, hygiene, agronomy, agriculture, etiquette, history of foodstuffs, as also recipe books, books on the representation of festivals, banquets, rituals, and poetry on the theme of food, etc.

The B.IN.G. boasts of some of the most interesting manuscripts on the subject, such as a splendidly illustrated “Tacuinum Sanitatis” from the XV century, an exemplar still unknown to scholars; a "Libreto de tutte le cosse the se magnano", also from the XV century, an interesting example of a presentation copy from its author, Giovanni Michele Savonarola, to the dedicatee, Borso D'Este; the "Taiare de cortello" by M. Chalesino, a XV century manuscript, the only manual in Italian of "carving knives" before the era of printed books; and various medieval recipe books such as that by the "Anonimo Meridionale", a XIV-XV century manuscript, and the "Registrum coquine" by Johann de Bockenheim, cook to Pope Martino V, a XV century manuscript. Among the outstanding printed books is the unique XV century exemplar containing the "Ordine de le imbandisone", a description of the marriage feast of Isabella of Aragon and Gian Galeazzo Sforza; a volume entitled "Il refugio del povero gentilhuomo" by Giovanni Francesco CoIle, published in 1520; numerous editions of Platina, among which the incunable of the first edition (1475), containing an interesting contemporary manuscript note which cites, for the one and only time, the patronymic Rubro Comensi of the celebrated cook Martino da Como; and again editions of Scappi, among which a particularly rare one, undated, but in everything similar to that first published in 1570; along side these are the works of Messisbugo and of other leading figures in gastronomic literature such as, to mention only Italians, Cervio, Romoli, Stefani, Nascia, down to the works of Corrado, Leonardi and Artusi.
Desirous of organizing the Library in systematic fashion, some years ago the Fondation decided to create files of the bibliographical material and at the same time to set about producing a Catalogue which would describe the works in the Library's Italian and Latin collections, wherever they had been printed. The preliminary criterion in setting up the Catalogue was the creation of a computer-aided tool to provide a stratified arrangement and organization of the historical and bibliographical data.
In the light of the enormous expansion in the use of computers, this choice might seem obvious, but it was in fact a pioneering decision since they had not then been used with library material. On the one hand, the employment of computers generated a series of problems which had to be dealt with, such as, for example, the topography of the file itself in its constant adapting to the description - the most complete possible and in separate fields - of the bibliographical document. On the other hand, the computer made possible a fairly rapid insertion of a considerable number of complex items of information, the constant revision and updating of them - operations hitherto inconceivable. Furthermore, computer assistance also made possible the compilation, in a relatively brief span of time, of the eleven indices of the Fondation's bibliographical material, complemented by a further two elaborated on the basis of a comparison of the documentation of the B.IN.G. collection and that drawn from the specialist literature and bibliographical sources, making for a total of thirteen.
A Macintosh's"' data base, directly connected to purpose-built software, made both the handling, checking and automatic impagination of the above data, as well as the subsequent production of the film for printing possible. The Catalogue as published consists of 3 volumes embracing 2862 pages overall, the first two containing the file material, the third containing the indices and 15 pages of graphics. The entries for Printed Books and for Manuscripts come in two distinct sections, both preceded by an introduction by the expert who collaborated in the setting-up of the relative basic entry and in definition of the structure of said sections (Piero Innocenti, Professor of Theory and Techniques of cataloguing and classification, University della Tuscia, Viterbo, for the Printed Works; Bruno Laurioux, Maitre de conference a l'Universite Paris 8,for the Manuscripts).