The code and the libraries

Abstract

It is certainly the most important reform among the many that in recent months have taken place within the sector of cultural heritage. Amidst the great controversy that accompanied its birth, it certainly represents an important evolution in the discipline of the sector. Under some aspects at least, it also certainly marks another missed chance for the world of libraries.
We are talking about the fundamental law for the sector of cultural heritage, that law of protection that was emanated last 22 January 2004 (D.L. n.42), with regard to which, before dealing more extensively with libraries, we must at least mention some particularly important elements of a more general nature.
Thus, for example, it seems to be particularly important that art.1 identifies the fundamental principles which have inspired the Code, or the solution adopted to finally include in one series all cultural heritage, no matter what the category to which they belong, or again to recognize the nature of cultural heritage of a whole series of realities ignored by previous legislation. Lastly, great merit should be attributed to the attempt, even if not always successful, to provide a detailed and organic juridical definition of the many activities connected with cultural heritage, or of the institutes and places of culture prefixed to them.
By contrast, we cannot but mention the many perplexities excited by article 12 on the control of cultural interest and the even serious consequences which, according to some, could have involved the very survival of our cultural heritage. The article has in fact appeared to many commentators all the more serious considering that the entire control procedure must be terminated within 120 days from its beginning and that, should there be no response within this time, the control must be understood as concluded with a negative result.
If however as a whole the new Code can be judged fundamentally positive, the question changes considerably where the specific area of libraries is involved.
Once again, in fact, many of the problems of the sector were not so much as mentioned by the Code, while for many others the answer provided was at the least either partial or unsatisfactory.
Just consider, for example, the complex and many-sided theme of the fruition of library property, liquidated in just one paragraph, or the absence of any reference whatsoever to the national library services and institute of legal deposit, or the disappointing and reductive definition of a library provided by the letter b) of paragraph 2 of article 101, the first definition of a library, please note, ever formulated in an Italian legislative text and precisely for this reason certainly worthy of greater attention and awareness.
Similarly confused and contradictory is the solution adopted with regard to the area of competence between State and Region with respect to the safeguarding of library property, a subject, as is known, radically altered by the decree of 1972 which transferred to the Regions the state administrative functions regarding libraries of local bodies. On the basis of this decree, the only case in the sphere of cultural heritage, the offices of the supervision of library property were transferred to the Regions and their tasks were in part transferred and in part delegated to the Regions themselves. Well, the rather unclear wording of paragraphs 2 and 3 of article 5, far from rectifying an historical controversy introduced in regard by the Decree of the President of the Republic no. 3/1972, seems rather destined to increase the uncertainty for the future.
Inattention, lack of consideration for the sector of libraries, simple superficiality? Certainly partly this, but the real problem actually is more likely another, perhaps more fundamental also, only partially linked to the specific question of the Code and directly connected rather with the very nature of our institutions and, therefore, of our specific profession. If, as Angela Vinay wrote in 1967, our libraries have the task of preserving the books possessed, but also that of spreading and producing culture, providing readers not just with what they possess, but above all with what they need, it is in fact clear that the Code cannot, even if only partially, respond to our requirements and specificities.