The founding batch of 108 books from the Archaeological Society of Pontevedra marked the beginning of the Museum's library, which was created, like the Museum, in 1927.
It is a specialised library with exhaustive literature on a group of specific subjects: art – with special mention of the figure of Goya –, archaeology, history and related disciplines. It is worth mentioning the Galician collection, of great importance since for several decades this centre acquired the publications included in the Bibliography of Galicia, which referenced all the bibliographical productions created in Galicia, those published in Galician, with Galician subject matter or authored by people from this autonomous community, until the establishment in the 1990s of the Higher Bibliographical Centre of Galicia, which took over this function.
Over time it was enriched with important contributions made by various benefactors who chose the Museum of Pontevedra as a destination to house their libraries and make them available to the public. Among these many contributions, we can highlight those of Casto Sampedro Folgar and his son Sampedro y Mon, which combine an interesting bibliography on music with rare editions of Galician authorship or subject matter; that of Francisco Javier Sánchez Cantón, containing around 15,000 monographs and numerous gazettes; that of Alfonso D. Rodríguez Castelao, in which we find representation of Galician intellectuals prior to the Civil War as well as foreign illustrated magazines; the collection of the polygrapher and former director of the Museum, José Filgueira Valverde, which, together with reference works on art, has a section on literature, especially Galician-Portuguese literature; the Baltar collection, with printed works on the War of Independence and political issues of the 19th century; the collection of José Casal y Lois, fundamental for the study of local history; the collection of Víctor Said Armesto, specialising in literature from the late 19th and early 20th centuries and philosophical subjects; the materials contributed by Sebastián González García-Paz and the CAA collection. In addition, we have the library of Antonio Odriozola, who had been a patron librarian of the Museum, with thousands of monographs, pamphlets and magazines on subjects such as studies on liturgical books, mycology, camellias, gastronomy, music and literature.
Currently, the Museum's bibliographical collection exceeds 150,000 bibliographical records, together with a newspaper library with around 5,000 magazine and newspaper headers, a map library with more than 500 maps and plans, a grey literature section, etc., which continues to grow through new donations and, of course, acquisitions by purchase, subscription or exchange.
Museo de Pontevedra