One of the principal difficulties that the MANES project had to face starting with its creation in 1992 was the lack of a register or catalog of school textbooks published and used in Spain starting in the 19th century. Filling this void and making these primary sources available to researchers therefore became one of the MANES Project’s main priorities. This led to the establishment of the MANES DATABASE, in which we set about cataloguing collections of school textbooks from public libraries, teaching institutions and private collections. As the network of researchers affiliated with MANES expanded throughout Latin America, Portugal and Belgium, school textbooks from these countries were also incorporated into the MANES database, which as of the year 2016 contained approximately 35,000 entries.
MANES is also home to a collection of textbooks from past centuries, which make up part of the MANES Collection, incorporated in the Central Library of the UNED. This collection currently contains more than 7.500 works which are used by researchers from the world over. The catalog of this collection can be consulted on-line within the general catalog of the UNED’s Central Library.