The ‘seismic library’: a tool for historical inquiry on natural disasters

The “Seismic Library”, which includes the Perrey archive, is a unique historical collection of texts and manuscripts on the earthquakes and volcanic eruptions of the past. It is preserved in the library of the Società Napoletana di Storia Patria. As described in a previous article (Guerra 2023), the core of the collection is the result of the tireless research of French scientist Alexis Perrey (1807-1882), who is regarded as one of the founders of seismology. For the first time, on the basis of unpublished documents, the article reconstructs the events that brought this documentation to Naples, twelve years after it was put up for sale. It examines the role that the information archived by Perrey played in the creation of parametric earthquake catalogues, the fundamental tools in historical seismology. Finally, it discusses the reasons for contemporary scientists’ special interest in the historical texts that make up the Fondo Sismico.