Alfredo Montalvo Bolivian Digital Pamphlets Collection
About this collection
This collection features digital images of 714 pamphlets published in Bolivia between the 1840s and the 1940s. The original pamphlets are held in Cornell University Library’s Division of Rare and Manuscript Collections as the Alfredo Montalvo Bolivian pamphlets collection, #6885.
The pamphlets in this collection document a century of Bolivian literary culture, beginning in 1848. They shed light on the nation's struggle to establish viable institutions, to develop its economies, to educate its children, and the evolution of its government and political systems.
All of the pamphlets in this collection have been digitized.
Historical context
These pamphlets principally derived from a donation made to Cornell by Alfredo Montalvo, a Bolivian bookseller who specialized in supplying Bolivian books to North American libraries. Operating as Libros Andinos, his firm would eventually expand to supplying books published in Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru and Venezuela. Montalvo was a key partner with former Cornell University Library's Latin American Studies selector David Block (1945-2021) in building the Library’s collection of Bolivian materials.
Using the collection
These pamphlets were digitized to provide broad public access to published material about Boliva and are presumed to be in the public domain. The digital collection can be browsed, or searched by author, title or keyword.
For questions about this collection, contact the Division of Rare and Manuscript Collections at rareref@cornell.edu.
More information
- Collection steward
- Katherine Reagan, Ernest L. Stern '56 Curator, Rare Books & Manuscripts
- Metadata creation
- Cornell University Library
- Credits
- This collection overview was reviewed and updated by Katherine Reagan, Ernest L. Stern '56 Curator, Rare Books & Manuscripts in 2025.
- Collection sources