Roberto Ardigò

The library of Roberto Ardigò, which contains both printed texts and the personal archive of the philosopher (autograph manuscripts of his works, letters and other material) passed into the hands of his pupil Giovanni Marchesini after his death, and Filippo Canal aquired it from Marchesini’s heirs. In turn, Filippo’s heir, Pietro Canal offered the collection to the Biblioteca Universitaria, which acquired it in 1984. The library had already acquired some of Ardigò’s manuscripts from antiquarian booksellers in 1935. The library also includes a significant number of printed books which belonged to Marchesini, and it is not always easy to distinguish them from the original collection.
The Inventariotopografico della Biblioteca Ardigò concerns only the printed books, and according to Filippo Canal’s description contains 275 books which definitely belonged to Ardigò and possess notes in his hand, another 450 which definitely belonged to Marchesini, 1700 volumes on philosophical subjects from between the end of the nineteenth century and 1920 which probably belonged to Ardigò, and large quantity of offprints.
The topical index of the library, which is entirely conserved in a section called “Biblioteca Ardigò”, is subdivided in four sections according to these distinctions:

Section A: Works that definitely belonged to Ardigò, Works by Ardigò
Sezione B: Works donated by the author or publisher, books and journals of uncertain provenance, works that belonged to Marchesini, works by Marchesini
Sezione C: Periodicals
Sezione D: Pamphlets and offprints

Bibliography on the library: G.P. Mantovani, Le “carte” del filosofo. Il fondo “R. Ardigò” della Biblioteca Universitaria di Padova, Trieste, Lint, 2003 (this article only deals with the personal library of the philosopher).