The European Library

Cultural institutions as libraries, archives or museums assume particular imprint in every country. In San Marino operate National Archive, Museum and Library, which for their origins are to be considered of a relevant importance. This facility served as a place where books were conserved, the place that contained the multiform marks of history of the country, like manuscripts, illuminated manuscripts, incunambula, cinquecentine, or the only copies, to be transmitted to the future. The San Marino National Library was born in 1839, when the Grand and General Council decided to buy the book collection from the widow Onofri. In 1846 the building Palazzo Valloni, the actual Library building, was bought together with the volumes it contained. The two book collections were qualified of "public utility" only in name, but in deed the consultation of books was prohibited.

Only ten years later on 11 March 1858 "The Captains Regent proved the utility of opening the Library to the public at least once a week". In 1883 the marquis Antaldi di Pesaro was commissioned to reorganize the Library that was without catalogue, but he says the Council deliberation "came here once and did not come again". The same work was offered to Conte Luigi Manzoni, a man of letters who offered himself to reorganize the material at the Library, but he just disposed the volumes on the wooden shelves of PalazzoValloni. The rooms were restored in 1880 and in 1881 together with the whole building, which served for the meetings of the Grand and General Council during the period of restoration works of the Government Palace.

On 27 March 1884 the State Secretary Domenico Fattori ordered the reorganisation of the Library and the Museum and the drafting at least of an inventory of all the material. In June 1885 Carlo Malagola started the reorganization of the Archive, and in 1890 two young people offered their work to do the same in the Library. They were Marino Borbiconi and Pietro Franciosi, the last one became later the leader of the socialist workers movement in San Marino. Their was the first arranging of the property of the Library. The report of Franciosi and Borbiconi states: "The Library owns almost 12000 volumes, some of them are rare or autographical editions and it is very rich in the miscellany". They recommended keeping updated the Library, especially in the "positive sciences and archaeology and daily opening for the population’s students’ and teachers’ needs".

The Library was opened in 1894, but very soon it was again forgotten for the lack of personnel and public money. In 1908 Pietro Franciosi tried to find a remedy to this situation and so he wrote to the Captains Regent: "The Public Library, at the present state, cannot satisfy the needs of the modern intellectuals because it lacks the necessary funds. The desire to read and to learn have raised the importance of the libraries to one of the most important social structures, not only limited to the needs of a few learned, but extended them to all social classes.



The library must nowadays satisfy all tastes; people are beginning to understand that the learning is important and necessary as much as the bread, and that even without schools they can learn from books that are the best promoters of progress and civilisation. So the reading room is to be opened definitively with fixed opening hours. More books are to be acquired. Very important is the general reorganisation of the Library, because it is very difficult to find books only by the author’s catalogue, as we have it today. The reorganisation is to be based on authors, subjects and references. Finished this work it will be easier to understand the insufficiencies of our Library and what has to be supplied. Once our Library will be functioning regularly, it is important to get in touch with other important Italian Libraries and Editorial Houses to get enriched with new and important volumes.

During the first decade of the XX century the number of books in the Library is in constant increase. (The donation of the families Broccoli from Naples, Dr. Nardi from Bologna and of some other citizens). Some of these volumes are of great importance, such as Achille Tellini’s natural science publications, or "Biblioteca Comunitativa" from Bologna. At that time the Library owned 25000 volumes, for a great part old books of little fruition. Onofrio Fattori, a politician and a man of letters, during the period of his work as a responsible of the Library, collected books, autographs, antiques and old prints, but he did not have time nor qualified collaborators to organize the material using modern criteria.

Nothing changed until the second World War. On 26 June 1944 the Palazzo Valloni was hit during an air bombing of the allies. The books were gathered and cleaned, but only in 1954 Pietro Zanna, a librarian from Faenza, and his nephew Giovanna reorganised all the material and instructed the personnel.

In 1958, after the death of Mons. Renato Paolini, the parish priest of Domagnano, the Library obtained his collection of 11000 volumes, which represent the intellectual and scientific curiosity of the owner. But even this event could not provide for the lack of the policy of purchases and the increase of the Library.

From fifties onwards nothing happened. For fifteen years the Library only survived, forgotten by everybody, considered more as a place where to conserve and not a public facility. The Library, until recent years, was in conditions of backwardness, above all for its service. The non-functioning was felt in every field of its activity: the logistic problems, the staff and the organisation. Recognizing the necessity of activating it in order to start operating and fulfilling all its functions, there has been a long process of reorganization.



The library from 1982-1992

The Reorganization of the Library

It started in 1983 by "revolutionary" architectonic works in order to make a modern and efficient structure. The proposal to allocate Palazzo Valloni as the National Library or Museum, was not a new one; in 1975 a Library Responsible wrote about this problem: "The evaluation of the space is the first issue, everything cannot be placed in this building: or the Library, or the Museum". In 1977 his successor wrote: "It is not possible to do any updating or amplification in the National Library-Museum-Gallery, because of the lack of space. Expecially in the Library, all rooms containing books are completely full. The rooms are nor adequate for the conservation because of humidity, lack of airing and the building is without heating. The reading room has been obtained out of a corridor so it can be heated by a small stove. It is slightly illuminated by two tiny windows so that the artificial light is necessary all day".

It was necessary to adopt one of the fundamental principles of the modern biblioteconomy which puts as its final goal not the book, but the reader. The XIX century tradition considered the book the only real subject of the library, forgetting the right dimension of it, as a social facility. This made the National Library of San Marino an archaic and inadequate structure: the separation of people from books, the organization of the Library so as to fit the books and not the readers, who were considered as elements of disturb, and the definite transformation of the Library in a "Museum of the Book". So the most important goal was to reverse this distorted relationship to establish the right function, giving privilege not to the means (books), but to the goals (consumer). The reorganisation of the Library brought new spaces: reference rooms, emerotheque, research centre, but above all it brought new relationship - the library and the school, and the library and the territory.

As all over the world the mass education has changed the role of the library. Now the library has to answer to the new population of all kind of schools. The library has to cope with this new consumers and not to surrender to the elitist and antidemocratic temptation to reduce the requests to the minimum.

The Old Books

The National Library owns antique volumes. The "antique" volume means conventionally a book printed by the rudimentary machinery invented by Gutenberg and produced during the year 1800. It is qualified so not only for the temporary limited period of its production, but for the peculiarities that characterize it, peculiarities that form a fundamental aspect in the history of the printing. So the antique books cannot be considered in the same way as the contemporary ones. They need particular norms of cataloguing. When reorganizing the Library in 1983 a group of operators attended a course of biblioteconomy organized by the local Grammar School. This collaboration Library - School gave the result in the work of cataloguing of a thousand of "cinquecentine". Today the antique patrimony of the Library is ready to be examined. A philologist, a man of letters, a bibliologist, a bibliographer, a historian of art, or a historian, can be helped in his research work.

All this confirms the appeal of the work of librarian, a profession that has to be constantly solicited.

The New Functions of the Library

Library and School - The propaedeutics activity is important in order to activate a new relationship between the library and the school, able to give significant results. The example can be the school "research work" - only by using the resources available at the public library it is possible to start this kind of activity. So the school is preparing itself to use all the potentials of the library, and the library itself is engaging in what is of its competence, not only at the level of the "school sections", but organizing services with didactic goals, giving possibility to young consumers, for examp



The New Sectors

In order to prepare the Library for the new goals there has been a vast reorganization. At the beginning the most important sectors were privileged. The first to cope with was the material concerning the historical documents, particularly rich since the history of the Republic has always attracted various researchers. The objective was to achieve the maximum possible completeness. For example: the reorganization and the filing of the documents of the musical history of the country, is the sign of will to save even the cultural patrimony of "small" quantity, but of "big" quality.

Another field in which the reorganization has acted positively is the periodicals sector. Now there is the file of all periodicals, containing also all the information concerning the complete collection of local periodicals. It is important to mention the fact that the section of periodicals recalls in the Library people that have not yet established a solid relationship with books or with the public library, but are interested in reading newspapers or magazines, and in some cases it is a first level of acculturation. It is worth reminding that the number of 15 subscriptions in 1981 has raised to 500 and more.

Reference and Information

The three reference rooms collect and dispose to the public various material for the study of different topics. Traditionally these rooms were "reserved" only for "the scholars of maximum importance and consideration; the professors and the final year students". For the public there was a small room with dictionaries and books frequently requested. Today, with the new concept of the public library, the idea of the reference room has changed, too. To the idea of consultation as a research for the study is now joined the idea of information. The library must offer not only the general documentation, but also instruments for exact, immediate and fast information.

Nowadays in the San Marino National Library are available not only the most important or requested volumes, but also those that offer general information, that serve as introduction to various studies or researches. There are volumes of general character (bibliographies, encyclopaedias, biographic dictionaries, yearbooks, atlases) and volumes concerning various specific topics as agriculture, anthropology, ethnology, astronomy, architecture, arts and crafts, botany, chemistry, computers, cinema, communication and mass media, law, economy, classical and modern philology, philosophy, physics, mechanics, literature in general and particularly rich: American, French, English, German, Italian, Latin and Greek; besides there are volumes concerning mathematics, medicine, music, pedagogy, psychology and psychoanalysis, religion, biology and environment, sociology, sport history, theatre, town planing and zoology.

At last it can be said that there are always new proposals at the reference rooms and at the Library today everybody, student, professor or simply a reader, can find more than one useful instrument to orient himself.

The Research Centre

This Centre collects and selects the information from various sources. It gives the exact image of the social-economic evolution in San Marino. The Centre produces the publication "The Library and the Research". The recovery, the organization and the valorisation of the local history and culture are the qualifying functions of the Centre. The integration of the existing material, its organization and arrangement for the needs of researchers, but also promotion and diffusion of it, making it useful to the vast public, is a very important objective of the Centre.

The "Compactus"

This is the name of a piece of the equipment - a system of shelves that makes the most of the space. It eliminates internal wall structure because it rests directly on the floor; all the structure is held by vertical metal supports in which metal crossbars are inserted, the metal shelves are hooked on the crossbars. These shelves can be moved vertical



The library in 1993: towards the future

The Restoration Laboratory

The objective of the laboratory is the protection of the cultural patrimony. In the last ten years, taking part at various courses and collaborating with the Central Institute for the Pathology of Books, the Laboratory has specialized in the conservation of art work on paper, linen, wood, etc. Activities of the Laboratory:

• Restoration and bookbinding - restoration of printings and drawings; of manuscripts, codices, books with printing or register for archive; restoration of leather; bookbinding of periodicals and newspapers for conservation; microfilming of material for archives.
• Conservation - dusting of precious works of art (books and museum windows), disinfection and disinfest of the paper or wood art, microclimatic control, illumination control, particular machines for the conservation, screening anti UV.
• Exhibitions - organization of exhibitions, preparations and transport, packing in microclimate containers, organization of courses of restoration.

Automation

One of the most important goals to achieve during the reorganization of the Library was the automation. The start of the project named "The National Bibliographic Centre" ordered by the Ministry of Culture and Environment, considered first of all the specific and particular position of the Library, which for its history and position is a real "national library". Apart the collection of all edited material of the country, it is also the container of the history of the state and of its eminent citizens.

The evaluation of the problem of automation was made easier by the fact that in the near Italian region Emilia Romagna had been already realised a similar project. The decision not to join (at least for the moment) the Romagna National bibliographic Centre was dictated by the organizative, professional and economic problems. But this did not prevent the fruitful collaboration which brought later the signing of the agreement for the use of the Centre’s computer programme.

The cataloguing of the San Marino bibliography - this first result consented to use not only the Centre’s software, but offered occasions for the theoretical formation of the personnel that took part at seminars on International Standard Bibliographic Description, Italian Rules of Cataloguing Authors and on general problems of the National Bibliographic Service. After the installation of the computer system the cataloguing of the most important documents started, first of all the San Marino bibliography. This important nucleus of the Library consists of thousands of monographs, periodicals, manuscripts concerning the history of the country, material constantly consulted by historians, researchers and students.

The problem of the indexing - the system chosen for the indexing was ISBD used on the computer IBM PS/2-80. By semantic indexing of the documents concerning the San Marino history, it was necessary to "subjectivize" the choice of descriptors, compared to those adopted by the National Library in Florence.

Areas of Research are:

• Sammarinese Bibliography Section
• Documentation Centre - Section "Pietro Franciosi"
• Newspaper Library - Consultation rooms with open bookcases
• Ancient Documents Section
• Photographic Archives on Local History
• Video Library