Public Libraries Section

Country Report: Italy

July, 2002

Edited by Elena Boretti

1. Institutional situation

In 1972, legislative responsibility for libraries of local bodies and of local interest was transferred to the Regions. This was in keeping with what was established by the Italian Constitution. Almost all the Regions issued special laws in regard. Municipalities, and in certain cases Provinces, have no obligation but they do have the power to set up and manage public libraries. The national Government directly manages 48 libraries, including two central national libraries. State public libraries possess large patrimonies, but they also carry out a general public service. They co-exist with, but independently of, municipal or provincial and - in some exceptional cases - regional public libraries, which are usually smaller in size, but which very often, in their turn, combine the function of a public service with those of conservation and enhancement of important historical collections.

At the moment there is no national legislation to regulate public library services. Some Regions (such as Tuscany, Emilia-Romagna and others) have issued special laws for promoting co-operation between libraries and with other agencies of information, documentation, education and culture (such as archives, museums, schools). The most recent laws also promote the definition of qualitative parameters that can be verified by the users and of service Charters. Such co-operation is more developed in the north, where it has been in existence for some time. It is mainly municipal libraries that participate, but sometimes other libraries also join in such c-operation projects, and significant, even if not very frequent, is the participation of university libraries.

2. Statistics and surveying

There is an Italian libraries register. This is under the care of the Central Institute for the Single Catalogue of Italian libraries and of the Ministry for Cultural Heritage and Activities. It was born at the beginning of the 1990s and is today in need of a general update. It contains a census of about 15,000 libraries, 47% of which are public libraries, most of them established after 1972. However, although the overall national patrimony is well over 200,000,000 documents if we include the historical patrimony, almost half of the patrimonies of the public libraries is below 5,000 documents. This register was used recently for an investigation of the use of documents from public sources in Italian public libraries. The investigation was carried out under the auspices of the Italian Libraries Association (AIB) and Istat, the National Statistics Institute. 6,420 libraries were involved and 38% of these replied - well beyond the hoped-for target. The results of this investigation are still being processed.

Recent studies have advanced the hypothesis that there are about 6,000 public libraries currently in Italy (there are 8,000 municipalities in Italy), with about 100,000,000 volumes, 4,000,000 annual acquisitions, 7,000,000 registered users, 45,000,000 loans, perhaps 12,000 service staff. It is likely that these numbers come close to the real situation, and therefore we can hypothesize that about 13% of the Italian population uses public libraries. The truth of the matter is however that there is a huge difference between the north and south of the country. In the south there are in fact less libraries in relation to the number of residents, and whereas the north achieves better results, estimated around 17% of the population registered, the reality of this situation becomes gradually poorer as we descend towards the south, with large areas below 10%. In 1999 Lombardy, certainly one of the most advanced regions, had 1,254 libraries, 2.08 volumes per inhabitant, 0.98 loans per inhabitant, 119 acquisitions for each 1,000 inhabitants. Tuscany, in the centre-north of the country, with 810 libraries, in the year 2000 makes 0.36 loans per inhabitant and 43.15 acquisitions for every 1,000 inhabitants. One of the main problems found on a widespread scale in Italian public libraries is precisely the low level of acquisitions. It is calculated that the Italian publishing market annually produces approximately 12,000 new titles which are of interest to public libraries. Insufficient funding is also due to the very limited offer of multimedia aids.

floor-space: from 0.5 to 0.7 sq.m. every 10 inhabitants
opening times: from 40 to 60 hours weekly opening
staff: from 0.7 to 1.2 units for every 2,000 inhabitants
cost: from 25,000 to 35,000 Italian lire per capita (from 13 to 18 Euro)
collections: from 2 to 3 volumes per capita
periodicals: from 10 to 15 current titles for every 1,000 inhabitants
acquisitions: from 200 to 250 annual acquisitions for every 1,000 inhabitants
impact: from 25 to 40% registrations within the resident population
loans: from 1.5 to 2.5 loans per capita
circulation index (calculated on the documentation published in the last ten years): from 0.7 to 1.5 annual loans per volume

3. Internet diffusion

4. Copyright

5. Association and profession

The Association manages the professional roll of Italian librarians.

The site of the Association, AIB-WEB, is a point of reference for the update and exchange of professional information and documents. The discussion list of the librarians is called AIB-CUR. The AIB-WEB site contains instructions for registration, as well as various public columns. The profession of librarian has received some formal recognition in recent collective agreements, which foresee specific recognition for qualified professions. However this has still not produced any tangible consequence with respect to the situation of the past. The librarians of public libraries are subject to the work contracts foreseen for employees of local bodies, which are different from those of the Universities, of the State or of schools. Bibliocom is the occasion for an annual meeting of all librarians. It is usually held for three days in October in Rome. It is promoted by the AIB which also organizes the annual spring conference. Apart from these appointments, there is also an important annual convention in Milan that is held in March.

6. Projects

Much work is also being done on the question of managing collections and interlibrary loans. The offer of training courses for librarians has recently improved - a sign of a resumption of the policy of investments on the personnel, which had been absent for quite some time. Another important sign of recovery is the opening of new libraries. They are not many, but among the various projects carried out in small and large centres, there are some that are very significant in important cities, which recently opened a new library: Genoa, Aosta, Bologna (last December), while work on the projects of Turin and Milan continue. The Sala Borsa Library of Bologna, with an offer of about 140,000 contemporary documents (15,000 of which are multimedia), 143 personal computers, 334 seating places, lent on average 200 documents every hour of opening in its first six months of life.

Regione Veneto, Biblioteche del Veneto, http://www.regione.veneto.it/cultura/biblioteche.htm