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"Cooperation among many: the library system in
the province of Prato"
by Franco Neri
Director of the "A. Lazzerini" Library The area of cooperation consists of the entire province: 7 municipal
authorities with an overall population of more than 224.000
inhabitants who in any case exceed, when considering recent immigration,
234.000 persons in an area of 365,15 square kms .
We do not have an analytical census of all documentary resources.The
data therefore refers to municipal, historical and specialised libraries
which were directly subjected to the census, and is calculated in
relation to physical units (the year for regular publications).
The documentation contained in scholastic libraries and centres
of documentation run by unions, study groups and associations is
at present being assessed. All together the municipal libraries
are located in five municipalites: Prato, Montemurlo, Carmignano,
Vaiano and Poggio a Caiano, and hold approximately 200.000 items.
To these must be added the resources of the splendid Petrarca Public
Library, which is not a municipal library however, but run by volunteers.
It was set up in 1916 and contains 14.000 volumes.
The "historical" libraries as such consist mainly of the
Roncioniana Library, the historical archive of the diocese, the
contents of the famous Cicognini college and of the Bishop's Seminary,
which amount to 95/100.000 items.
However, as is natural, the "historical" elements are
also significantly present in other libraries, archives and organizations,
such as the A. Lazzerini and S.Niccolò Libraries and the
State Archives.
There is a notable wealth of material which in some cases is of
unique importance, even at the national level in libraries and centers
of specialized documentation such as those related to contemporary
art (CID/Visual arts; economic history (the F. Datini International
Institute of Economic History); history and archives (State Archives);
postal history (Institute of postal history studies); scientific
environmental documentation (Natural Science Centre, Library of Sciences of the Nature); music(School of Music Library); local documentation,
Tourist Agency library); Sport (UISP); Time and Space; History of
Photography (Tuscan Photographic Archive); theatre(Foundation of
the Metastasio Theatre), amounting to approximately 72.000 bibliographic
items.
Altogether the documentary resources amount to approximately 365.000
items, 45% of which are described and can be accessed in the network
catalogue.
However, to these data we have to add the apparently "submerged"
data which the process of cooperation has caused to emerge, and
which consists of diversified libraries and centers of documentation
some of which contain a remarkable wealth of material: association
libraries, including voluntary associations and organizations or
institutions involved in the vast area of documentation in the areas
of social and health care, libraries and documentation centres in
union organizations and the library of the A.S.L., just to mention
a few.
IIn all the libraries, and in particular in documentation centres,
the vast amount of 'grey' documentation and live bibliographic material
in a non-commercial documentation circuit is a mark of the intensity
of relationships and exchange with the outside world.
The wealth of material - which must be emphasised - is one of the
peculiarities of the local system.
Data related to libraries in secondary schools is still being processed:
one can at present assume there are about 100,000 modern volumes
in 13 secondary schools (11 state, 2 legally recognised), with significant
bibliographies in some of these (in the F.Cicognini Classical Lyceum,
the P.Dagomari Technical and Commercial Institute, the T. Buzzi
Technical and Industrial Institute and the Conservertory of S. Niccolò).
All municipalities in the area are also involved in a process of
updating the libraries of primary schools; here too, even if in
a more specific context, the setting up of a local network means
sharing resources and the circulation of knowledge and experience.
The catalogue of the A. Lazzerini public library was the first to
be seen in Italy (May '96) as part of the service offered to institutions
by the local network, consultable with an original search function
(EASYWEB) which allows for navigation of bibliographic resources,
extensively and intensively.
The possibility of consulting parts of the library (collection and
sections) by means of cross checks (authors, titles, dates,
subjects, classes, etc.) caused the library to lose that undetermined
character it always takes on when it is conceived as a place where
documents are collected, and not as a layered unit for collections
and documents.
However, other innovations must be pointed out: most of all the
ability to render information visible (and, most of all, bibliographic
information) within information of another nature, as in the spare
time page of the Prato municipal network and in the page called
Space and Time created by the Women's Bookshop.
In this way the libraries and the documentation become a dynamic
element in the aggregative fabric of a collectivity, factors in
the circulation of ideas and relationships.
A very recent innovation (February 2001) in the TESP archive, the
possibility of connecting the bibliographical record to other texts
(reviews, criticisms) - which in this way are rendered worthy of
note and of benefit - in reality constitutes an outstanding methodological
prospe: that of going beyond the bibliographical archive as an
instrument singling out documents which may be perceived as being
isolated,and highlighting instead information as offering and
explaining connections, relationships and exchanges.
We are thinking for example of a future application of this methodology
within EASYCAT software for the PRATO BIBLIOGRAPHY archive : the
reproduction of title pages and indexes; the complete notification
of reviews of volumes of particular bibliographical importance.
Not only greater access, therefore, but circular access which is
able to enhance both the intensity and the depth, the extension,
connections and identification of new documents and new places of
documentation.
What are we presenting today, as far as the visibility of documentary
resources on the net is concerned?
First of all a total revision of the search interface, the
EASYWEB OPAC used by the system since 1996.
If on the one hand the current revision owes a debt to the EASYWEB
OPAC precedingly personalised by university libraries(the Polytechnic
of Milan), it enhances the now well-established peculiarities of
the Prato OPAC:the exploration of the collection and its
sections; a teaching strategy in the use of information and the
integrated catalogue both in the design of the consultation field
and in the fundamental rewriting of online Help functions that explain
the makeup of search fields in the face of the usual and foreseeable
requests made by users. Viewing systems have remained stable
In their reduced format ("short-title") they also provide
identification of the publication.
To this extent the choice of a synthetic system of presentation
which however allows one to sufficiently eliminate ambiguity from
bibliographic information by means of the publisher and the series
(if applicable) has been confirmed.
On the other hand, it is one thing to read the Divine Comedy in
the Oscar, another if it is in the Meridiani series, and the user
must be informed of this beforehand.
The "Refine Search" optionis particularly refined: for the
careful researcher it favours exploration in depth, but the inexpert
user can also easily identify the more recent texts dealing with
a subject, or all those published in a particular language, by performing
a further closer search.
In the language option Albanian books appear; in the next update(March
2001) there will also be texts in Chinese and, following this, within
a year, publications in Arabic and Urdu.
The catalogue even in this case reflects its relative territory
and the wealth of ethnic groups living and working there as well
as the growing offer of documentation in other languages which the
libraries (most of all the A.Lazzerini Library with its own multicultural
services) offer to persons and communities who have recently immigrated.
Searching through the Prato Bibliography presents itself
as being a process which is culturally, methodologically and bibliographically
considerably innovative.
The fact of being able to consult a data bank in which we find the
collections of three important libraries(The A. Lazzerini Library
in Prato, The Roncioniana Library and the Bartolomeo della Fonte
Library of Montemurlo) as well as the local units of the Vannucciano
Collection described above, in fact presents us with a significant
instrument for research and the accelerated retrieval of other local
collections (e.g. APT) through procedures of derived cataloguing.
In the present phase it still presents the accumulation of archives
from these libraries: however, within a year also bibliographical
materials from the APT Library, local collections in Poggio a Caiano,
Vaiano and Carmignano, and in the Petrarca Library in Vernioma will
be made available.
In this way the catalogue enhances the wealth and the specific qualities
of each library: the innovations present favour the circulation
of documents, the in-depth exploration of the life and history of
these libraries and centers of documentation, the development of
exchange and information.
With this update we have therefore underlined the peculiarities
of the documentary system in Prato and the strength of cooperation
among those that go to make up a system in constant growth in terms
of subscribers and interest.
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