Pesaro, fano, urbino: Libraries in three small cities of central Italy

Abstract

Italy abounds in libraries, private and public. Within the system of forty-seven libraries regulated by the state are the national central libraries of Rome and Florence; the national libraries of Milan, Naples, Palermo, Bari, Turin and Venice; twelve university libraries; eleven libraries annexed to national monuments-Montecassino, for instance, and Subiaco; and sixteen special libraries, among them the Biblioteca Mediceo-Laurenziana, formed from the collections of Cosimo the Elder, Pietro de’ Medici, and Lorenzo the Magnificent. However, these libraries of the state public system, with their marvellously rich and varied holdings, are essentially the domain of scholars: they have about as much impact on the daily life of the ordinary Italian citizen as the Huntington Library in Pasadena has on the everyday life of the residents of Bakersfield, California. Readers in Bakersfield who want to find out how to build a patio, or win at small claims court or poker, or who crave a weekend’s worth of science fiction, go to the Kern County library or one ofits branches. What sort oflibrary service is available to the citizens of the Italian equivalent of Bakersfield? According to the UNESCO Statistical Yearbook, 1976, there are in Italy 8686 municipal libraries serving 2 944 163 registered borrowers. Curious to know something of the day-to-day operation of Italian municipal libraries outside major metropolitan areas, and of the concerns of their librarians, I chose the province of Pesaro-Urbino, in the region Le Marche of central Italy, as my field of investigation. Pesaro-Urbino, 1117 square miles in area, with 330000 people, is similar to Kern County in population, and similar as well in that it is predominately agricultural: 42% of its residents work in agriculture; 34% in industry. At this point the similarities cease, for Pesaro-Urbino enjoys forty-two kilometers of Adriatic coastline dotted with beach resorts which draw huge numbers of Italian and European tourists each summer. This narrow coastal plain rises abruptly to the foothills of the