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Copyright of AIB Studi is the property of Associazione Italiana Biblioteche and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of AIB Studi is the property of Associazione Italiana Biblioteche and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Il contributo intende offrire un resoconto e alcune riflessioni intorno alla prima edizione del master biennale internazionale Conservation of antique photographs and paper heritage, svoltosi tra Il Cairo e Catania, promosso dall’Università di Catania, dall’Università di Helwan (Il Cairo), dall’Ambasciata italiana in Egitto e dal Centro italo egiziano per la conservazione delle fotografie antiche e del patrimonio cartaceo (EICAP). Il master ha visto la presenza di 22 studenti egiziani e di numerosi docenti, sia italiani sia egiziani, che si sono alternati nei quattro semestri offrendo un contributo di rilievo all’approfondimento in chiave internazionale delle tematiche inerenti la gestione e la conservazione del patrimonio documentario, in modo specifico, di quello cartaceo e fotografico. Di grande valore e interesse la collaborazione, in margine al master, con istituzioni bibliotecarie di rilievo internazionale quali, ad esempio, la Bibliotheca Alexandrina.

The relationship between the reader and the text plays a fundamental role during the act of reading. The book transition from the print to the digital format entails significant changes in how the reader interacts with the text and ascribes meaning to the reading process. These changes, driven by new technological advancements, can profoundly impact the reading experience, eliciting a range of responses from reader acceptance to dissatisfaction with the chosen medium. Despite new electronic devices attempting to emulate the reading experience provided by paper books, the digital realm continues to shape our perception of reading, highlighting the differences in manipulating a physical text compared to one displayed on an e-reader screen. The paper puts forward several themes that have emerged from a case study on the perception of digital reading at the University of Salamanca (ES). The aim is to gain a deeper understanding of and insight into the preferences, expectations, and behaviors of contemporary readers, highlighting the gap that has emerged between analog and digital reading, primarily driven by the structural and aesthetic differences between the two reading formats and, consequently, their interaction with the reader. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The book by Lucio Gambetti, An editorial Odyssey: one hundred years after Joyce's Ulysses, little more than a hundred pages, leads us on a journey through the publishing history of one of the most important and influential novels of the twentieth century, James Joyce's Ulysses. In particular, the book focuses on the Italian edition of the novel, exploring its publishing history, its critical reception, and the linguistic challenges that made it difficult to translate and interpret such a complex work. In the past, the issues related to the question of copyright for the various editions of the novel over the decades has been already addresses, the copyright claims made by the heirs, in particular by the late Stephen James Joyce (who passed away in January 2020), and the double expiration of the author's copyright, first in 1992 and then in 2012. The subsequent battles over the copyright of the unpublished manuscripts, the veto on investigating what the original text of the work was, the censorship biographers were subjected to at the hands of Stephen Joyce, and the editions that disappeared from the market are all issues that the author of this article is familiar with. Throughout the twentieth century, numerous acts of censorship slowed down the availability of translations or revisions in the publishing market in various countries. Therefore, this paper is an essay-review, with some new references missing in Gambetti's book, such as the recovery of a sentence of an Italian Court, which can be found at the end of this paper. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper offers a reflection on the volume Leggere in Europa. Testi, forme, pratiche (Secoli XVIII-XXI), a rich anthology edited by Lodovica Braida and Brigitte Ouvry-Vial on the history of reading in Europe from the 18th century to the present. The volume makes use of the most recent historiographic studies and proposes a common history of reading in Europe starting from the ambiguous and debatable concept of 'revolution'. Just because it is ambiguous and debatable, this concept is endlessly questioned, and this is the strength of the volume: the reader, essay after essay, is led to reflect on the elements of continuity and fracture that characterise the history of reading as an individual and collective practice, and ultimately on the role or new roles that the book exercises in people's lives and imaginary. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper presents a methodological focus on recent projects related to the description of incunabula, which started in 2015 in Sicily, in Syracuse, and then landed in other Italian regions and even across the border, in San Marino and Nova Gorica. The praxis applied addresses the study and description of incunabula with a codicological method, an approach that is not considered more scientific than others, but - according to those who practice it - is the one that allows one to observe details of both textual and material nature with greater attention, and also to highlight certain descriptive difficulties. One could perhaps speak, therefore, of an experimental methodology for describing incunabula-although almost ten years have already passed since its first application - which looks back to the manuscript model, but points forward to the description of the ancient printed book. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Covid-19 pandemic made the matter of how to train 21st century readers even more urgent, preparing them to deal with a media scenario of attention economy, disinformation, infodemic and post-truth. This paper analyzes the new challenges that readers have to face, through the lens of some fundamental dichotomous questions for the present and the future of reading: information versus knowledge; slowness versus acceleration; attention versus distraction; boredom versus hyperactivity. What are the cognitive differences between digital reading and reading on paper? What do we risk losing in these conflicts? And what can we do to continue to comprehend what we read?. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper reflects on La biblioteca pubblica e la sua reputazione, Maria Stella Rasetti's last book, published by Editrice bibliografica. The reflection starts from the reputation as object of study of different disciplines (such as communication, marketing, economics, sociology) and analyzes the importance of library reputation, closely associated with identity and image. Rasetti identifies four classes to place Italian public libraries and proposes a model to measure library reputation, adapted from business models, which uses personalized questionnaires for each class. The paper analyzes model validity and contextualizes it in the field of user satisfaction, performance and libraries impact. The hope is that measuring reputation can help public libraries to build a new narrative that overcomes public administration stereotypes of which they are victims, and to equip citizens with useful skills for work, everyday and social life, making them active and conscious protagonists. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper traces the evolution of the UNESCO Public Library Manifesto from the first revision in 1972 to the recent version of 2022. The 1972 Manifesto, a hasty update of the 1949 text, marks a clear change in the addressees: no longer local communities, citizens and the library profession, but public authorities and profession-als. There is a strong emphasis on the role of the public library in culture, reading and information; on the right to access for all; on new media. The 1994 Manifesto is the first joint IFLA-UNESCO Manifesto. It stresses an intimate connection between freedom, well-being, the development of society and individuals and a conscious and complete exercise of a full right to access knowledge. The public library is defined as a 'local gateway to knowledge': an effective definition for a non-localistic vision. In the text, however, there is a gap between the formulation of the context scenario and the wealth of content that has emerged since 1990 in the Human Development Reports of the United Nations Program Development, a radical rethinking of the traditional concept of de-velopment. The 2022 Manifesto stemmed from the collaboration between IFLA and UNESCO-Section Infor-mation For All Programme. This article questions the three fundamental thematic nuclei of the new text: - 'sustainable development'. A more explicit reference to the UN 2030 Agenda would have made more transparent the type of orientation (systemic, multidimensional and inter-institutional approach; integrated design and planning; development of feedback knowledge; inter-generational perspective) necessary to face the challenge; - 'libraries in the knowledge society'. There is a very strong connection between knowledge and skills for citizenship, with an emphasis on scientific citizenship and the methods and tools for its effective and daily exercise; - the 'community' is a pervasive leitmotiv. Citizens are not just users, but builders of knowledge; libraries play an essential role in building 'bridging' knowledge and open communities. The IFLA/UNESCO Manifesto 2022 is probably a transition text. In the expression of the key mis-sions for the public library, the Manifesto reveals an underlying tension for the future, contained in the alert attention to the present. It is one of the most significant messages, which could perhaps have been made clearer and more intense with a closer integration between the different missions of the public library and a stronger integration of the rich UNESCO tradition on educational policies, cultural heritage, intercultural dialogue, human development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The dissertation can - metaphorically and anthropologically - constitute a 'rite of passage', since it marks the transition from student to graduate status. It is a written work: a sort of essay, planned together with a supervisor, that the undergraduate student produces and discusses at the end of a cycle of University studies. The drafting of the paper is usually fraught with impediments, due - in principle - to the fact that students never before have to face such a task and, therefore, the utmost care is needed so as not to, more or less intentionally, run into the infringement of a third party's intellectual property. By virtue of this, the present contribution has a substantially pragmatic goal, since it intends to offer methodological guidance for the writing process, hoping to help students avoid incurring in plagiarism. The university library, from this point of view, plays a crucial pedagogical function, since it does not merely provide documents, but it contributes to expanding the boundaries of the civic and social, legal and cultural education of undergraduates. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Proceeding from the shift, in the perspective of librarianship, from the centrality of book and library collections to that of the user, the paper intends to explore the informational potential of semantic indexing for notated music, to be considered as a pervasive tool for the organization of an integrated information retrieval service based not only on musical performance but also on fruition. Through a case study, insights will be offered on the practice of indexing notated music in Anglo-Saxon countries through the projects developed by the Library of Congress (LCSH, LCGFT, and LCMPT). Practical proposals will be offered to streamline the retrieval of music resources in the National Library Service by means of the Nuovo soggettano (the Italian New Subject Heading system). After analyzing the information needs of the users of a music library, the authors will propose a FRBRization for SBN OPAC (the Catalogue of the Italian National Library Service), moving from the categorization of Musical Works according to form/genre, and, by exploiting the 'logical connections' that link works with related subject entities provided by LRM, they will propose that subject headings may function as a flywheel to enable the transformation of the SBN OPAC into library linked data. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper examines the rich production and the reflections by the writer Dino Provenzal (1877-1972) on his relationship with reading and on the world of books, on readers' behaviour, on the inadequacy of libraries in Italy between the two wars. The author focuses especially on the many articles by Provenzal published in L'Italia che scrive, the journal by Angelo Fortunato Formiggini, between 1922 and 1938. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper proposes a new methodological approach to collection evaluation in public libraries, with the aim to read bibliographic and usage data in a less self-referential way and to improve collection development and management. Behind this approach there are two integrated types of analysis. The first one is a quantitative and qualitative benchmarking between different library collections: the attention focuses on the size of collections, the variety, the publishers, the subjects, the circulation data. The second type of analysis concerns the benchmarking between library collections and editorial production. Also in this case, the comparison covers the quantitative aspects (number of books selected by libraries and number of books published), the qualitative aspects (subjects, types of documents, Conspectus levels) and the usage data (loans and sales). The paper illustrates the results of a first and experimental application of this methodological approach for the analysis of collection portions of 26 public libraries (belonged to two Italian library systems), that are compared with the editorial production of the subject area Social sciences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

AngelaVinay (1922-1990) was a leading personality in the history ofItalian libraries ofthe twentieth century. Among the numerous and prestigious positions she held, she was the first female president of the Italian Library Association as well as the director ofthe Central Institute fortheUnion Catalogue (ICCU), where she conceived and promoted the National Library Service (SBN). This dossier collects the papers of the conference “For Angela Vinay’s centenary: civil commitment, construction and modernity of nationwide library services”, held in her honour atthe CentralNational Library of Rome on the 24th ofNovember 2022. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper deals with a topic that results still little discussed and which seems to be central to imagining what trasformations libraries will undergo in the near future. This is the concept of multifunctionality. Starting from the data analysis of the first three Istat Census’s editions, this concept was explored in relation to the characteristics of Italian libraries and thanks to a data driven approach a detailed geography is offered, reflecting variations that occurred between 2020 and 2022. The physiognomy of the libraries’s multifunctionality before and after the Covid-19 pandemic was therefore reconstructed. Thanks to the results of an ongoing survey, it was also possible to combine this study with a mapping of the so-called ‘new multidisciplinary and independent cultural centres’ which are widely spread nationwide and which seem to stand out precisely for their multifunctionality. By comparing different visions and analyses, the intention was to set up a comparative reflection betweenmultifunctional libraries and new cultural centers to discover the characteristics that make them contemporary places. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper offers both a synthesis and a reflection on the topics addressed during the conference “Women in 20th century’s publishing: sources and case studies”, promoted by Apice Center and the Department of Historical Studies at the University of Milan. The conference aimed at enhancing a field of study that is still little explored, highlighting the challenges involved in the retrieval and use of sources and in the research methodologies applicable to the reconstruction of biographies and activities of female protagonists in 20th century publishing. The day was divided into two sessions, “Sources of the self” and “A room all for one’s self? Case studies and digitization projects”, both encompassing a rich and intensive program that revisited and delved deeper into the themes of feminization in the publishing industry and the use of publishing as a lens into women’s work, at the same time providing important methodological guidelines to approach sources such as the archives of publishing houses and authors, as well as autobiographies. What characterized the conference was the proposal of a complex and interdisciplinary path across history of gender, history of professions, and history of culture. Such path should present female authors, translators, editors, and publishers who show vibrant and multifaceted profiles, but whose narratives have often been obscured by their male counterparts. At the same time, attention should be given to the historical context, to pivotal moments, in the development of the publishing and cultural system at large, as well as to the treatment of sources, of which, in this circumstance, the complexity and criticality fully emerged. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

On 13rd October 2016 the Chiostergi-Tuscher archive and library, originating from the heirs' house located in France (Saint-Cergues Les Voirons), was transferred to the Centro cooperativo mazziniano "Pensiero e Azione" in Senigallia. The paper reports about how this remarkable heritage of Chiostergi-Tuscher was retrieved and returned to Italy after thirty years. The collection includes correspondences, letters, diaries, documents, journals and papers, pictures, books, posters and other archival and bibliographic materials of great historical value to learn about the political, civic and cultural activities of Giuseppe Chiostergi (1899-1961), anti-fascist, member of the Italian Constituent Assembly and of Parliament, ambassador, pro-European and statesman, friend and correspondent to leading Italian and European personalities in the 20th century. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper focuses on the role of the public sector information, seen as the most relevant form of accountability for a democratic state, crucial for citizens to be able to take informed decisions in their lives. The paper stresses also the role of public administration publications in the complex world of public sector information and describes the evolution of the availability and the access to these resources. The author analyzes the evolving scenario of Italian public sector information of the last twenty years, the e-government transition and the issues still to be faced. In particular, the author notes a discontinuity in the publication and making available by institutions of this type of documents and analyzes the reasons. Lastly, the article underlines the importance of information literacy and civic information literacy for communities' development and digital well-being. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The digitization project Giving a new voice to sources. Communicate humanistic research for all aims to make available to the scientific community the audio archive of the Bruno Kessler Foundation's Library, which preserves the recordings of the conference activities of the two humanistic research centers of the Foundation. The project represents, at least in Italy, one of the first attempts to realize a virtual space devoted to audio archival sources researchable freely online to avoid the deterioration of a cultural heritage of extremely scientific relevance, leading to its conservation and availability. The deterioration of the analogue media of the archival collection makes the digitization a matter of survival which allows a diffusion otherwise unthinkable. The accessibility to the audio archival sources allows for enlarging the number of scholars and students that can benefit from the collection for the research. It also allows general users to approach the cultural contents of the humanities. The paper aims to describe the goals, the phases of realization of the project, the methodological problems due to the critical issues of the material supports, the descriptive analysis of the contents, and the opening of the database. The first part of the essay describes the history of the audio archive of the library. This archive covers an extensive period from 1974 to the new Millennium and is composed of the reels and compact audio cassette. The second part analyses the phases of work of the project, from the preliminary analysis of the support to the conversion and the digital reworking. The last part is dedicated to the method adopted in the compilation of metadata of the files and to the description of the structure of the database, as well as his research functions and the descriptive scheme of each audio. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper analyzes the various themes addressed in Storia confidenziale dell'editoria italiana by Gian Arturo Ferrari, published by Marsilio in 2022. The author is one of the main protagonists of Italian publishing industry: he worked for almost fifty years in Mondadori and for other publishers, as well as presided over the Centro per il libro e la lettura. From this privileged observatory, he reconstructs atmospheres and anecdotes and provides a wealth of data and information on the events that have characterized the main Italian publishers' life, extending his reflection to the development of Italian society in general. The work is not (only) an historiographical essay but also a story written by someone who was witness and protagonist of the narrated facts, representing, at the same time, a handbook for those who want to work in this world and learn the publisher's profession: it is a book that was not there until now and that certainly fills a gap. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper deals with the analysis of the works and theories by Paul Otlet and Otto Neurath, focusing on their positions on the visual value attributed to images as a worldwide knowledge-democratization means. In detail, the theories properly defined by the authors and also the existing scientific studies in the literature referring to the visual communication conceived as a resource by which disseminate and achieve knowledge on a wide level will be illustrated. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper traces the history, including legislation, of the libraries of the State archives, born, often thanks to the will and tenacity of the directors who, through a capillary correspondence network with the cultural institutions of the national territory, fleshed out the newly erected libraries with volumes as a gift or obtained through exchanges of book doubles. The purchase on the antiquarian market and from private citizens of single volumes but also of entire book collections, important for reconstructing the history - including literary history - of the territory of competence, makes these libraries unique in their kind. Established for the updating of archivist officials and to allow them to study, reorganize and inventory documentary collections, over time they have changed their mission by expanding the audience of consultation to external users but only if they are unable to find publications in other libraries. To date, despite boasting a library heritage of a certain importance and often unique, they are managed in the absence of personnel in the role of librarian with all the problems that this entails in terms of cataloguing, planning of purchases and assistance for bibliographic research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper illustrates the results of a survey conducted in the period January-February 2023 involving the users of the Turin Public Libraries, an urban system currently affected by a significant strategic rethinking process. Through the analysis of the answers to questionnaire provided by 3,926 people, it was possible to bring to light the complexity and the multidimensionality of the act of reading and to gather interesting information on three central issues: the process that leads readers to choose the book; the libraries' role in fostering and enriching the reading experience; the complementarity between book and other form of access to narrative world, both outside and within libraries. These cognitive elements can help both to improve the collection development policies and to favor the meeting between readers and collections, also through their integrated and transmedial organization within an enriched physical and virtual bibliographic space, which stimulates and enhances the reading experience. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent years, Italian academic libraries have undertaken third mission activities linked to the enhancement of their heritage: library science scholars have already been studying this kind of initiatives, and today the Italian national agency for the evaluation of universities and research institutes (Anvur) considers such actions as a result of the institutional commitment of a university library. A workshop, organized by the Library System of the University of Ferrara together with the Italian library association during the Stelline congress 2022 (Milan, 11 march), analyzed the case study of the bibliotour Storie di libri e palazzi, set up by the University of Ferrara; the workshop also explored new strategic opportunities for the enhancement of academic libraries' heritage, firstly the inclusion of all audiences, with specific reference to Goal 10 ("Reduce inequalities") of the United Nations 2030 Agenda. Furthermore, this perspective embraces potentially the entire corpus of recommendations provided by the Agenda. The paper is intended not only to report the main ideas that emerged during the workshop held in Milan but, starting from them, also to suggest building a network of academic libraries, in order to facilitate the communication of third mission initiatives and their public outreach. Therefore, full adherence to the inclusive dimension and the commitment to sustainable development are two new strategic opportunities for academic library activities related to heritage enhancement. AIB has been supporting both strategies for several years, by means of concrete actions, such as the "Maria A. Abenante" Award, as well as organizational structures, like the Observatory on library and sustainable development (Obiss). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Singapore Pavilion, set up as part of the 59th edition of the Art Exhibition La Biennale di Venezia, hosts the work of artist Shubigi Rao, a threefold multidisciplinary installation comprising a book, a video and a paper maze built around the theme of books destruction. They are part of a decade-long project under the title Pulp: A Short Biography of the Banished Book. Starting in 2014, it has brought the artist to visit archives and libraries all around the world and to meet women and men who daily dedicate themselves to defending books and cultures on the margins. Here we present the works exhibited in Venice (2022) and the three books that have already been published (2016, 2018, 2022) out of the five scheduled. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The conference "Measuring and evaluating libraries: was it worth it? Changes, impacts and narratives from 30 years' common work" looked back at over three decades of applied library research, aiming at reporting about different assessment experiences, and outlining new potential perspectives for the future of library evaluation. This paper provides a summary of the conference, reporting the most significant passages of all the speakers' contributions, and concludes by individuating in the collaborative and co-planning dimension a key to future developments in library evaluation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper proposes some considerations on the configuration of the disciplinary sector M-STO/08, which, in the Italian juridical-academic lexicon, is described in a concise declaration, published with the Ministerial Decree of 4 October 2000, which briefly delineates its boundaries. Mission 4 "Istruzione e ricerca" of the PNRR (Piano nazionale di ripresa e resilienza) envisages a reform of the degree classes and binds the relevant scientific communities, such as the SISBB (Società italiana di Scienze bibliografiche e biblioteconomiche), to adaptations, which concern both the concrete organizational and procedural dynamics, and, at the same time, the theoretical and methodological implications referred to them, and which therefore affect the profile of the disciplinary field of bibliography and library science. The specific objective proposed is primarily based on the analysis of the contents of the current declaration of the disciplinary sector M-STO/08, on its position in the hierarchy of the academic organization, and on the lines of development of the bibliographic culture, that the «short text» of a declaration may succeed in prefiguring. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper aims to focus on the importance of investigating the value and weight given to libraries by politicians, decision-makers and administrators within their political and administrative activities. The article proposes a reflection on the value given to libraries by some Italian policymakers and a quantitative and qualitative analysis of the presence of libraries within the electoral programs of the Italian local elections (autumn 2021-spring 2022). This study has made it possible to construct a map of the positioning of libraries in the mind of politics. This fact is essential for understanding the context from which librarians and researchers can start to change the perception, often simplistic, of policymakers about libraries, to make them understand the impact that libraries can have on society, and to identify effective and efficient strategic actions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper takes as its focal point falsehood as an issue in the post-factual truth society. After reaffirming that the concept of truth represents a fundamental element for the very survival of democracy, and having specified its meaning (too often misrepresented), the paper discusses the impact and ambivalence of the Web as a place of production and dissemination of counterfactual information, highlighting how the loss of credibility of traditional knowledge validation authorities has deeper and remote roots. It supports the need and the possibility of opposing a drift indifferent to truth, understood as continuous research and as a public debate based on evidence and questions and not as dogma. Finally, it highlights a role that is not only possible, but already more than glimpsed by public libraries in relation to a problem that cannot be ignored, touching their very raison d'être. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

International comparative research in the library and information science (LIS) field examines the processes and phenomena related to libraries and other information organizations and their users. with a focus on differences and similarities across countries or cultures. International research is challenging due to language barriers, ethical concerns, and the legacy of the colonial research model. This paper presents an international research project undertaken by members of the International Federation of Library Associations (IFLA) Library Theory and Research (LTR) Section which investigated the approaches to teaching research methods in LIS programs worldwide. The paper focuses on the project’s research design, on the research ethical issues and on the collection of multilingual data. It discusses the inherent challenges in conducting international research and outlines the approach to increasing the geographic and linguistic diversity of study respondents. The LTR research team adopted several strategies to recruit participants from multiple countries and collect data in three languages. The recruitment announcements were distributed throughout international and regional mailing lists in multiple languages. The survey instrument was translated from English to Spanish and French, and the interviews were conducted in English and Spanish. The authors also discuss the methodological advantages of mixed-methods design and the benefits and limitations of using surveys and interviews in international research.

International comparative research in the library and information science (LIS) field examines the processes and phenomena related to libraries and other information organizations and their users. with a focus on differences and similarities across countries or cultures. International research is challenging due to language barriers, ethical concerns, and the legacy of the colonial research model. This paper presents an international research project undertaken by members of the International Federation of Library Associations (IFLA) Library Theory and Research (LTR) Section which investigated the approaches to teaching research methods in LIS programs worldwide. The paper focuses on the project’s research design, on the research ethical issues and on the collection of multilingual data. It discusses the inherent challenges in conducting international research and outlines the approach to increasing the geographic and linguistic diversity of study respondents. The LTR research team adopted several strategies to recruit participants from multiple countries and collect data in three languages. The recruitment announcements were distributed throughout international and regional mailing lists in multiple languages. The survey instrument was translated from English to Spanish and French, and the interviews were conducted in English and Spanish. The authors also discuss the methodological advantages of mixed-methods design and the benefits and limitations of using surveys and interviews in international research.

The Post-I_IT (Post_Incunaboli_ITaliani) project is the result of the collaboration between Fondazione Scuola per i beni e le Attività culturali and ICCU (the Central Institute for the Union Catalogue of Italian Libraries and Bibliographic Information). It led to an update of the data stored in two fundamental databases dedicated to early printed books: the National census of sixteenth-century Italian editions (EDIT16) and the Incunabula Short-Title Catalogue (ISTC). The project focused on the identification of the Italian post-incunabula 'erroneously' recorded in one of the most important Fourteenth-Century book depositories, in order to integrate information relating to specific editions and items preserved in libraries all over the world. In addition to emphasizing the terminological issues, this paper intends to analyse some substantial differences relating to the descriptive methodology of the two databases, especially in the light of the recent update which enhanced EDIT16. The information which the project contributed to integrate includes: works of uncertain authorship, controversial attributions of typoghrapher or publisher, uncertain dates and places of publication, the location of previously non-registered specimens and the retrieval and linking of digitized specimens via hyperlink. Like other projects, it was possible to demonstrate that the interaction between databases can stimulate further reflections and considerations regarding the nodal information service of bibliographic repositories, and foster identification surveys beyond national borders. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since the end of the nineteenth century in U.S. libraries and research centers there has been a growth in book collections that, in 1944, is calculated as exponential. Growth that undergoes a sharp increase after World War II, noting, at the same time, a high rate of overlap between collections, which reduces the total holdings to about two-thirds of the world's published holdings. Using the technology of the time, based essentially on procedures for microfilming documents, proposals for deduplicating collections and reducing the amount of space occupied on the shelf are being developed from a lot of quarters, while electrical, or electronic, devices are being designed and, at times, realized combining the optical element, microfilms, with information retrieval techniques to achieve information discovery integrated with document retrieval. It was actually a series of devices based on the same operating principles, such as electrical photocells, microfilm and high-speed photography, invented, reinvented and reengineered, from which some prototypes were created, until, completely rethought by another inventor, one went into production and was successfully and commercially used. Some of the figures who gravitated around these devices have either remained in the shadows or have been forgotten: this paper, beyond documenting a pioneering period that was very significant for librarianship and for the developments of future information retrieval systems, aims at representing the importance and the role that these people played. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The main goal of this research is to give a vision of the main challenges faced by Spanish publishers because of technical change, analyzing its digital transformation. Subsequently, this work proposes different publishing business models currently tested in the market, from which publishers can take advantage by expanding the portfolio of their products and services. Besides, this study outlines and formulates possible future scenarios to deepen the Spanish publishers’ cultural and business functions and encourage them to assume a proactive position on innovation. The main conclusions of this research are the following: first, the Spanish publishing sector presents two lines of business that coexist as complementary and not as substitutes: on the one hand, the paper book and, on the other, the e-book; second, the innovative caution of Spanish publishers is holding back the development of the e-book market on the supply side, given the low volume of works published digitally compared to those on paper; third, the lack of joint digital initiatives, that is, between the different agents of the book value chain, has caused hardware manufacturers and Internet service providers to enter the book industry, surpassing, in many cases, traditional industry players in the creation of new business models for digital content; and finally, the current pandemic situation has represented a turning point in the attitude of a part of the Spanish publishing sector, forced to focus on the need to carry out an accelerated digital transformation to continue with its activity, for which the Covid-19 has indirectly catalyzed, as a collateral effect, the urgency of organizational change.

The paper aims to provide an overview of the 61. National congress of the Italian library association "Librarians, the most beautiful job in the world. Also in Italy?" (online, November 25-26, 2021). Numerous speakers from the professional sphere and the university context participated in the congress, many of whom belong to AIB commissions and observers. The most significant issues that emerged from the speeches were reported, but we are aware of the impossibility of returning their rich content. In the conclusions, a reflection is proposed on the need to address the critical issues of the profession and libraries through different perspectives, overcoming self-referentiality and thus reaching a rich and profound knowledge of our sector. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the first part the paper illustrates the results of an analysis of the Italian editorial production on LGBTQ+ issues, limited to non-fiction for adults published between 2016 and the first half of 2021. Subsequently, the analysis focuses on the representativeness of these publications within the collections of the library systems located in ten large Italian cities. A comparative study is carried out on various aspects: years of publication, publishers, DDC classes, Conspectus levels, usage data. Moreover, through interviews with librarians a qualitative survey is also conducted, to bring to light additional elements, including the reasons and criteria for the acquisition or the non-acquisition of LGBTQ+ titles. In conclusion, after a comparison with similar studies conducted in other geographical contexts, the author tries to understand whether cognitive biases are among the factors influencing the development of LGBTQ+ collections. Bringing out any bias is fundamental to make librarians more aware and to emphasize the professional ethics and the principles of plurality on which the concept of public library is based. This type of study also allows to obtain detailed information elements to be taken into account in projects aimed at implementing recommendation systems that exploit the potential of Artificial Intelligence and, in particular, of machine learning: it should not be forgotten, in fact, that algorithmic biases reflect real-world biases. temi e analisi [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The formal representation of cultural metadata has always been a challenge, considering the heterogeneity of cultural objects and especially when dealing with experts' interpretation over them. This paper presents an overview of the mythLOD dataset production as the Mythologiae digital collection revalorisation into linked open data format. The research aims then to explore Mythologiae data leveraging semantic web potentialities, focusing over the formal representation of experts' analysis when associating visual artworks (and their interpretations) to literary sources. The workflow of the project consisted of data model definition, data cleaning and entity linking, conversion (from tabular data to graph) and testing activity (domain experts review over competency questions and two designed on-purpose data visualizations). The result is the mythLOD platform, which present the dataset and the detailed documentation of the research. Additionally, the platform hosts the two data visualization spaces which have been implemented -- the online catalogue and the storytelling experiment over Aeneid -- as a user-friendly testing unit for the dataset and an additional tool for documenting the project and exploring the collection. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Technological advances have permeated all spheres of our daily lives, and GLAM (Galleries, Libraries, Archives, and Museums) institutions have not been an exception. These institutions have evolved towards a greater concern for communication with their users, especially through virtual exhibitions. However, the creation of these digital spaces also requires ensuring accessibility for all users. A valuable tool that can facilitate the understanding of the information included is its availability in easy-to-read, which creates a fully accessible environment for anyone interested, including those with disabilities, difficulties in reading comprehension, or limited proficiency in the language. In light of this, the current study proposes an initiative carried out within the framework of the Cultural and bibliographic heritage in the context of GLAM (Libraries, Archives and Museums) Project, in collaboration with the IDEA Lab Research Group of Complutense University of Madrid (Spain). This initiative involves the creation of a virtual room housing part of the library collection of the Library of the National archaeological museum in Spain. Each item within this collection is accompanied by a label translated into easy-to-read. This paper outlines the adaptation process of the exhibition’s written content and details the creation of the virtual exhibition within the context of the third edition of “Built with Bits”. The study’s findings suggest that the implementation of easy-to-read in virtual exhibitions can markedly enhance accessibility and inclusion, enabling a more diverse audience to engage with, appreciate, and comprehend bibliographic heritage.

The paper reconstructs the main lines of the history of AIB studi. Journal of Library and Information Science, an Italian Library Association publication. The previous titles and editorial programs development of the journal are outlined, highlighting how the 'vocation' for the establishment of a scientific journal - as well as professional interest - internationally oriented and fully open access has been increasingly defining, with the support of the Italian Library Association (AIB). In particular, critical steps from paper to digital, indexing and open access are discussed, referring to journal management and editorial work, to actual issues and principles involved, and looking at the still possible developments in the direction of open science. The landscape in which AIB studi is placed and progresses is finally completed with some digressions on related topics, such as e-journals management systems, citational databases, and the open access movement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper addresses the potentialities and the limits ofthe citation analysis used as tool forthe evaluation of the scientific research in all the fields and in specific way in the field of the Human and Social sciences. Above all, the paper analyzes the proposal suggested by some authors – Adrianus J. M. Linmans, Howard D. White and Daniel Torres-Salinas together with Henk F. Moed – of using the survey of the number of the monographs in the holding of libraries as index of scientific quality of the works of the authors subjected to evaluation. Regarding themethodologies proposed by three authors – the Libcitation,the Library holding analysis and the Library catalogue analysis – there are put in evidence some critical elements that might make not reliable the reckonings relative to the diffusion of the monographs in the holdings of libraries, verifiable using on-line catalogues. In particular, are analyzed those tied to the composition of the library holdings and to the presence of copies donated and not acquired by the library, elements both underestimated by the authors examined. Atlast, itis putinto prominence how itis inopportune to accept as indicatorin the evaluation ofresearch inHSS the count ofthe presences ofmonographs in libraries, and how it is instead shareable the use suggested by Torres-Salinas and Moed of online catalografic data as sources for bibliometric analysis on the distribution of monographs and on the publishers' production. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper reflects on the future of libraries, moving from Disegnare il futuro della biblioteca: linee guida per la redazione dei piani strategici per le biblioteche pubbliche (i.e. Drawing library futures: guidelines for strategic planning in public libraries), the document issued in autumn 2020 by the National Commission for Public Libraries of the Italian Library Association. The pandemic crisis accelerated a series of social, economic and cultural phenomena; on the one hand, this highlighted the capacity of adaptability and response demonstrated by the cultural sector, most of all its ability to face the digital demand and other emerging needs; on the other hand, though, the situation highlighted the gaps and inefficiency of short-term approaches and visions, and revealed the infrastructural weakness, a certain fragility in the organizations and a lack of those skills needed to face the change. In this historical moment, strategic planning can represent an important advocacy opportunity for public libraries, as emerging goals are being agreed upon with stakeholders and in economic, human and planning resources are being negotiated with funders and policy makers. In this sense, the document can become the perfect tool at the right time, capable of fostering the overall growth of political awareness of the role that libraries can and must play in the new scenario; moreover, it also represents a compass to identify the necessary programmatic, technical, administrative, economic, organizational and cultural connections, which are prerequisites to start the transformation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper traces some professional choices that guided the management of Italian libraries over the last fifty years, focusing on the interpretation of their cultural role, also in relation to the progressive spreading of digital culture. Libraries, regardless of their functional typology, remain a constitutive part of Italy’s cultural heritage: it is therefore essential to find a synthesis between their nature of ‘cultural heritage’, their information function and their social function. In light of this common ground, it is therefore important to find a synthesis between libraries’ informative and social function. Today, libraries are in the most favorable position to weave relationships between people and institutions. Librarians can identify in this current context fertile ground to redefine their profession and place themselves at the service of an Italian civil and cultural revitalization. It is a question of giving libraries – intended as places of inclusiveness and gathering – a greater baggage of knowledge and culture to perform their widely recognized social role. By expanding their range of action, libraries remain social, cultural and information hubs capable of carrying out a renewed connective and participatory function. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper aims at presenting some reflections drawn from the analysis of the data extracted from two crowdfunding projects. The latter were started to financially support the publication of two catalogues: Incunaboli a Catania I: Biblioteche riunite “Civica e A. Ursino Recupero” (2018) and Incunaboli a Catania II: Biblioteca regionale universitaria (2021). Close attention is given to the strategies enacted to foster the valorization of two libraries and a portion of their bibliographic heritage within the framework of an ongoing research project; among its goals is serving as tool to promote participation in and sharing of libraries as common goods. Data analysis is conducted through the lens of cultural sociology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper deals with two closely related issues: the legal deposit of cartographic materials in Italy and their census by the Bollettino delle pubblicazioni italiane ricevute per diritto di stampa (1886-1957) and the Bibliografia nazionale italiana (BNI, 1958). Although cartographic materials represent a heritage of extraordinary historical, artistic and cultural value, they have long been neglected by legal deposit regulations, and their census by the Bollettino and Bibliografia nazionale italiana was irregular for a long time, until it was completely abandoned in the 1960s. Moreover, only maps and atlases were required to be deposited and surveyed, while other types of cartographic resources such as globes, three-dimensional models and digital maps were never taken into account. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The world of publishing distribution has increasingly become an object of interest for both industrial production and the readers. The recent past showed that books must be selected carefully not only by bookshop managers for their buyers, but also by libraries for their users. Libraries themselves are examined in their relation with publishing distribution: the paper presents an initial analysis of the process enacted to pursue the goal that each individual title may fruitfully contribute to the growth of the whole library collection. The research considers only the acquisition of print monographs from some of the most important suppliers of both public and academic libraries; with these vendors it was possible to entertain a crucial and essential direct discussion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper proposes some considerations related to the contents of Chiara Faggiolani’s book Come un ministro per la cultura: Giulio Einaudi e le biblioteche nel sistema del libro (2020), dedicated to Giulio Einaudi’s intellectual and editorial personality, and focusing on the relationship between the ‘Dogliani project’ and the different environments of the Italian ‘book system’ of the early 1960s. The project, accomplished with the inauguration of the Luigi Einaudi Library in 1963, highlights the attempt to organically integrate architectural space, library collections and service management. What triggered this integration was Giulio Einaudi’s vision, shaped by his father’s passion for books and by the charisma and extraordinary intelligence of the members of the group called the ‘einaudiani’, who were the protagonists of the cultural season of a country, Italy, that was struggling to come to terms with massive cultural, economic, political and social transformations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]