University of Miami Libraries (UML) recently welcomed Linde Brocato as our newest Cataloging & Metadata librarian and rare book specialist for the Department of Metadata & Discovery Services. As UML's rare book specialist, Linde provides original cataloging for Special Collections and University Archives at the Otto G. Richter Library. Most importantly, she will be lead cataloger for the Jay I. Kislak Collection of the Early Americas, Exploration and Navigation, a collection of more than 2,300 rare books, maps, manuscripts, pre-Columbian artifacts, and other historic materials.
Linde holds a Bachelor of Arts in History from Birmingham-Southern College, a Master of Arts in Spanish from the University of Alabama, a Master of Science in Library & Information Science from the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, a Certificate of Advanced Study in Book History, Cataloging, and Classification, and a Ph.D. in Comparative Literature, specializing in Medieval Spanish Literature, from Emory University.
Prior to this appointment, Linde was a catalog librarian at the University of Memphis Libraries for six years, and she worked in various roles in the libraries at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. Over the years, she has become even more fascinated by and engaged with old books and papers, and the ideas they convey, which is why she became a cataloger as well as a scholar. She is interested in how people use books and documents, as well as making them accessible in various ways, by means of such tools as paleography, particularly Hispanic, and the analysis represented in both bibliographic records and in scholarship, including copy-specific annotations and marginalia.
Linde comes to UML with an extensive teaching and research background. Prior to becoming a librarian, she taught literature and composition at the Georgia Institute of Technology as a Brittain Fellow, the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign in the then-Department of Spanish, Italian, & Portuguese, and as an adjunct professor at Yavapai College in Arizona. Most recently, she has taught the GenEd “Introduction to Classical Mythology” at the University of Memphis, also as an adjunct. Linde continues to research and present on medieval and early modern Spanish literature, culture, and book history, on topics ranging from the 13th-century chess book of Alfonso X el Sabio to editions and reception of the poetry of Juan de Mena well into the 16th century.
Most recently, she is completing the full version of what began as a chapter on the “Toledo Rebellion” of 1449, the first instance of racialized anti-Semitism in Europe and the beginnings of what would become the Statutes of Blood Purity in early modern Spain and the Americas.
Linde Brocato can be reached at lxb811@miami.edu.
