From academic libraries to academic library systems: the Italian situation

Abstract

The concept of university library system in Italy has an organizational acceptation which was developed especially during the eighties and nineties. The definition of an organizational structure with systems features has become widely reckoned as a key element in the development of effective library services within the universities.Based on the lack of general overviews about library systems from an organizational point of view, this research was aimed at taking the first picture at national level of the university libraries sectors with regard to the organizational structures in order to be able to describe the overall situation in terms of systems degree of development. The research was based on three objectives:Objective 1: to understand how far the implementation of university library systems has gone in the various university sites, Objective 2: to understand in which form have university library systems been activated:Objective 3: to point out the main university library system models (Is it possible to classify the university library system into a finite set of categories of system structures?)
The research was conducted through:a thorough analysis of the professionals literature, which allowed to trace the evolution of the library system concept and its interpretation;a screening of the web sites, a novel technique which can be considered an hybrid between an observation and documentary analysis (virtual observation);a detailed questionnaire which has been sent electronically to those in charge of the library sectors of all Italian universities.
This article focuses on the results of the questionnaire and draws some conclusions following the analysis of the data.The main evidence from the research is that while it is difficult to attribute a system status to the various library sectors, it is nevertheless possible, by using a number of system indicators which have been defined during the research process and confirmed by the research, to detect for each university the active number of such indicators and therefore to state the closeness of the library sector of each site to a systemic organization. In terms of specific results the research demonstrates that a system organizational approach has been applied widely through the Italian universities. This application varies from site to site in number of indicators but it shows a prevailing pattern based on some strong common features (legal set up, coordination, automation) associated with some weak points (usually, collection development). Two important and novel outcomes of the research are:a provisional mapping of the Italian academic library systems;a methodology for the analysis of the university library systems.Such results, although they will have to be confirmed, updated and improved from a methodological point of view by further studies and research, provide the first general overview on academic lòibrary systems in Italy and open new perspectives in the area of library studies.