The Fundo Antigo (Old Collection) of Faculty of Sciences of University of Porto (FCUP) is constituted by a collection of books, paintings, drawings and other documents majority published/produced before 1945. The Collection is closely linked to the history of FCUP, with origin in the libraries of the schools that preceded the foundation of University of Porto in 1911 (with the Faculties of Science, Medicine, Engineering and Pharmacy), notably: Aula Nautica (1762), Aula de Debuxo e Desenho (1779), Academia Real da Marinha e Comércio (1803) and Academia Politécnica (1837).
The application of the Royal Decree of 9 July 1833 that established the Public Royal Library of Porto permitted the expansion and valorisation of the Collection determining that: “the duplicated books and documents addressing mathematical sciences, navigation, trade, agriculture, industry, geography, chronology, history and arts shall be donated to the Academia Real da Marinha e Comércio”.
The Fundo Antigo integrates essentially science works, but there are also collections of other types, particularly from the artistic domain. These works represent marks of the history of science and testify some of the highlights of the history of human thought and also of the typographic art.
Starting in 2005, the Fundo Antigo was the object of a deep intervention covering the components of disinfection, preservation, cataloguing, classification, indexing, digitalisation and promotion, which made possible to gather the conditions for the Fundo Antigo to be in conditions to fulfil its mission
It is underway an initiative aiming the constitution of the Fundo Antigo of University of Porto, starting from the Fundo Antigo of FCUP, which shall integrate the historic collections of the Faculties and of the Central Services of the University.
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