Libraries, librarians and regulations: the Regulation of 1885 in the judgement of the experts

Abstract

The history of Italian government libraries has been marked by the series of legislative provisions that, starting from the Unity of Italy, have regulated their operation. The first provision in library matters dates to 1869, by Minister Bargoni. After the establishment of the National Library of Rome, in June 1875, Minister Bonghi issued a new series of regulations on libraries (Organic regulations for the government libraries of the Kingdom), which, although representing an important effort at rationalizing the existing government libraries, did not however manage to establish a clear plan for the national library system. Not even ten years later, in 1885, Minister Michele Coppino approved the new Organic regulations for the government libraries of the Kingdom with the royal decree of 28 October 1885, no. 3464.
The new organic regulations were born at a time when the State was involved in identifying the deficiencies and defects of the government libraries of the Kingdom, in what way the librarians had received and implemented the dispositions of the regulations then in force and what amendments they considered opportune to bring to them.
The regulations appeared punctual and meticulous in dictating the norms that were to control the service and prescribed similarly meticulous rules regarding the administrative functions.
On the morrow of Italian unification the national library scene was characterized by the presence of a number of government libraries and libraries of national bodies that did not interact with one another and were still without the instruments and means necessary for providing an adequate response to the requests of their public.
Although mainly addressed to government libraries, the Organic regulations for government libraries, issued by Ruggero Bonghi in 1876, also considered municipal and provincial libraries in some of their provisions, while still remaining extremely distant from the creation of an organic national library system. Even the subsequent library regulations, of 1885, the work of Minister Coppino, did not intervene on the entire national library system, but only addressed the government libraries, with the exclusive aim of administratively arranging and organizing them. The chief defect of the new regulations was immediately identified by those in charge of the libraries in their meticulousness, which effectively annulled their decisional capacity and rendered the implementation of all the functions extremely burdensome for the employees.
An important aspect of the new regulations was the attention paid not only to library matters, but also to the more typically administrative and accounting aspects, the matters of control and of patrimonial responsibility and to the professional skill of the employees.