Where Comedias Sueltas Go to Be Discovered

Abstract:This research note provides an overview of Comedias Sueltas USA, a website dedicated to a census of holdings in US academic and independent research libraries of sueltas, understood as individual plays within the literatura de cordel tradition, published from circa 1600 to 1833 by printers based in Iberian cities, as well as population centers in Europe and the Americas ruled by Spain or within its sphere of cultural and political influence. We outline the project's fundamental goals and evolving methodologies since its conception in the early 1980s, as its founder and her collaborators have navigated the momentous technological changes that have placed special collections librarianship at the forefront of digital humanities. More recently, the project's collaborators adjusted their methods in response to the sudden closure of libraries the world over during the COVID-19 pandemic. Along with this chronicle of the long-running research collaboration, the authors provide an orientation to and explanation of the Comedias Sueltas USA website, explaining the kinds of research methods it supports for comedia and theater history studies, while also contemplating the potential for applying big data to major special collections projects.