Is there a "library law" in the Italian legal system?

Abstract

The article poses the problem of the possible identification in the Italian legal system of an organic collection of regulations that govern and control libraries, with special reference to those that carry out a public service. It is basically a question of establishing if in Italy there is a "library law", that in any case represents a more extensive and complex phenomenon than simple library legislation.
Reference is in fact made to the concept of "juridical process", as outlined especially by Norberto Bobbio, regarding and strictly connected to the other fundamental concept of juridical system, within the realm of which juridical institutes are born, in a framework that must exclude the presence of "antinomies", that is to say of contradictions between regulations.
It is well known that the Italian situation is characterized by the absence of an organic state law on libraries and by the presence, on the other hand, of a vast legislative corpus of a regional nature; this leads to the emergence in the library field not only of legislative sources that differ from those of the state, but even of a plurality of juridical systems, composed not only of formal laws, but of legislative situations of various nature.
What has however been lacking up to now, both on the state side and on that of the region, is an activity of systematizing those regulations capable of outlining with precision and effectiveness some fundamental institutes, first and foremost that of public libraries.
The most recent developments of basic local autonomy and the progressive establishment of the need for inter-institutional initiatives, based on the principle whereby in the case of two crimes, the punishment for the more serious crime takes precedence over the application of the punishment for the less serious crime, do perhaps make it possible to foresee a path to a better systemic arrangement, which however cannot disregard, obviously, the effective existence of sufficiently equipped library institutes. This can also form the confirmation of some principles established by the institutional school: that is to say the logical precedence of bodies that can be organized over the pure manifestation of legislative will.