LIBRARY Roberto J. Payro

“Roberto J. Payro” library: books, newspapers, maps, and videos

In Pavilion 2, the Maritime Museum of Ushuaia has inaugurated the Library "Roberto J. Payró" -which includes periodicals, newspapers, maps, and videos- in cooperation with the Municipalidad de Ushuaia (Municipality of Ushuaia) and the Gobierno de la Provincia de Tierra del Fuego (Government of the Province of Tierra del Fuego). 

Formerly, this place lodged the Library "Presidente Yrigoyen" belonging to the Cárcel de Reincidentes (Second Offenders Prison) of Ushuaia that, after the closing down of the prison, became the Library of the Base Naval Ushuaia (Ushuaia Naval Base).

The bibliographic values of the Maritime Museum cover topics related to the history, the geography, the ethnography, and the nature of Southern Patagonia, Antarctica, and South Atlantic islands. Besides, the library enshrines about six hundred donated works; this is the case with a volume of "The Last Buccaneers," by Emilio Salgari, dating back from 1900 along with seventy-four copies of "La Nación" (1907) that were ceded by the cartographer Juan Pablo Spinetto Sáenz Valiente. 

The star of this library, opened in March 1999, is one of the only two copies known around the world of the first French edition of "Le Phare du bout Monde" (The Lighthouse at the End of the World) by Jules Verne, published in 1905 with illustrations by Geroge Roux. The volume has been donated by the Paris-based Jules Verne Documentation Center, where the other known copy of the first edition released is kept. 

In the adjoining room, we find the three volumes of "El manual del carpintero" (The Carpenter's Handbook), a Spanish publication of the early 20th century which has an added value because some pages contain poems, notes, and messages written in pencil by prisoners.

In Buenos Aires, you can consult the center of studies of the Maritime Museum of Ushuaia, where there is a wide book collection also focused on naval, Patagonian, and Fuegian topics such as the complete collection of the Boletín del Centro Naval (Naval Center Bulletin), which was first issued in 1881 and contains data and testimonies of expeditions that took place before the foundation of Ushuaia, three years later, or the works of the Salesian Piedmontese Alberto María De Agostini, who explored the Fuegian archipelago between 1910 and 1929. The priest wrote "Mis viajes a la Tierra del Fuego" (My Voyages to Tierra del Fuego, 1927), "Andes patagónicos" (Patagonian Andes, 1941), and "Sfinggi di ghiaccio" (Ice Sphinx, 1958).