The post-war period and recovery

The BncF and the new field of Library Science

The return of democracy, the recovery of international relations, the advent of automation and both the need and opportunity for true collaboration characterised Library Science in the post-war period: this article examines the significant intellectual and technical efforts of those who, with commitment, capacity and modesty, embraced the task of saving the memory of Italy’s cultural production and providing Italian librarians with the tools that transformed a craft into a profession.
While, in the first half of the Twentieth century, the inauguration of new library buildings or the construction of modern and functional storage was accompanied by censorship, calling for the removal of the cards of unapproved works from catalogues, librarians from Republican Italy were aware that information and culture formed the foundation of democracy, and worked to ensure that literature was available to all levels of society (CARINI DAINOTTI 1964).
The BncF sought to modernise and above all to offer its services to other Italian libraries, either by improving cataloguing or by producing tools for library activities.
1956 was a fundamentally important year for library sciences in Italy: it saw the publication of the Subject Indexing System (SOGGETTARIO 1956), which, based on the experience in indexing gained at the BncF since 1925, was organised under the guidance of Emanuele Casamassima by a group of young people employed by the Central Institute for the Union Catalogue, including Carla Guiducci Bonanni, an expert in mathematics whose long career saw her serving as director of the BncF and Under-secretary for the Ministry of Cultural Heritage. The fact that choices were made on the basis of implicit rules sometimes led to misunderstandings in application, but its validity was demonstrated both by its uninterrupted use for a period of fifty years and by the adoption of its fundamental principles in the tool that replaced it, the Thesaurus (NUOVO SOGGERRARIO 2006) produced by the BncF at the beginning of the 21st century.
The new manual for cataloguing by author, which – published in the same year – revised the rules from 1922 and was thorough yet incomplete, led to the decision to update the Bulletin of Italian publications received under legal deposit on the basis of the example of National Libraries in other countries, rendering it a true National Bibliography, with significantly renewed awareness of the duties and functions of a catalogue of this nature. The innovation not only concerned the structure of the catalogue cards, which were reliable and provided full references (i.e., secondary entries and subjects), but also the organisation of monthly series, organised in accordance with Abridged Dewey Decimal Classification.
Of particular importance, demonstrating the striving for cooperation and efficiency, was the publication of the catalogue cards from the National Bibliography, which – despite the delay in publication – represented a guarantee of quality for the catalogues of the Italian and foreign institutes that acquired them.
The printed catalogue cards also served to promote the use of the international format and the consequential abandoning of the so-called “Staderini” card catalogue system, which saw the photographing of the latter (albeit with the loss of some information) and the immense task of combining the two catalogues into a single series.
As early as the ‘60s, the BncF had realised the potential of automation, and when it chose to set up the new Italian National Bibliography, it also took on the task of providing easier and quicker access to the huge quantity of bibliographic references (approx. 600,000) listed in the Bulletin. Drawing on the collaboration of Kraus Reprint, the records were typed onto perforated cards, organised in a single alphabetical series and published in the 41 volumes of CUBI (CUBI 1968), which represented the most complete collection of Italian publications and proved to be an indispensable tool for endless research. The survival of our forebears’ work was ensured by the conversion into the National Library Service of the magnetic tapes obtained from perforated cards, an operation directed by Gloria Cerbai.
The BncF has always been attentive of international advances, promoting or contributing to sharing the knowledge of all forms of innovation in the field of library sciences, from the Paris Principles to the ISBD, and from UNIMARC to FRBR. In collaboration with the Central Institute for the Union Catalogue of Italian Libraries (ICCU), or with the commissions set up by the Ministry of Cultural Heritage, the BncF, drawing on international regulations and the most recent international studies, provided a fundamental contribution to the development, initially, of the RICA (Italian Rules for Cataloguing by Author – RICA 1979), leading to an overall rethinking of the Italian code in light of a unified system of principles, and later contributed to setting up the REICAT (Italian Rules for Cataloguing – REICAT 2009), a completely novel approach to the document.
A period of automation began under the guidance of Diego Maltese, becoming one of the major focuses of the directors: from ANNAMARC to the Magazzini Digitali, the BncF became a forerunner for all forms of experimentation: in the implementation of the SBN, in the testing of various forms of digitalisation, in the creation of the MAG and in addressing the crucial aspects of conserving digital resources, including those sent electronically.
The new law on legal deposit, which underscores the role of the BncF as an institute for memory and national identity, has also bolstered its role as a bibliographic agency, although the latter can only be fulfilled properly with sufficient economic and human resources, managed with a level of flexibility and management possible only through administrative and executive autonomy.

Bibliography

• Carini Dainotti 1964
  VirginiaCarini Dainotti, La biblioteca pubblica istituto della democrazia, Milano, F.lli Fabbri, 1964.
• CUBI 1968
  Catalogo cumulativo 1886-1957 del Bollettino delle pubblicazioni italiane ricevute per diritto di stampa dalla Biblioteca nazionale centrale di Firenze, Nendeln, Kraus Reprint, 1968-1969.
• Nuovo soggettario 2006
  Nuovo soggettario. Guida al sistema italiano di indicizzazione per soggetto. Prototipo del Thesaurus, Biblioteca nazionale centrale di Firenze, Milano, Bibliografica, ©2006 (stampa 2007).
• REICAT 2009
  Regole italiane di catalogazione. REICAT, a cura della Commissione permanente per la revisione delle regole italiane di catalogazione, Roma, ICCU, 2009.
• RICA 1979
  Regole italiane di catalogazione per autore, Roma, Istituto centrale per il catalogo unico delle biblioteche italiane e per le informazioni bibliografiche, 1979.
• Soggettario 1956
  Soggettario per i cataloghi delle biblioteche italiane, a cura della Biblioteca nazionale centrale di Firenze, Firenze, Il cenacolo, 1956.Aggiornato a Dicembre 2011

BNI: the early years

“The Italian National Bibliography. This is a monthly publication, with indices by subject and author […], which will substitute the current Bulletin of Italian publications received by legal deposit. Organised in accordance with the structure of the DDC system […], it includes the catalogue cards printed over the course of the month to which each issue refers. It uses the same typographical layout as the cards themselves”. This is how the director of the BncF, Alberto Giraldi, announced the BNI in a document from October 1957 regarding current cataloguing, which was followed by two surveys sent to 1300 public libraries, publishers and booksellers by the National Library of Florence. On 14 November 1957, in Taormina, Giraldi took part in the debate following up on the report by Laura De Felice Olivieri, the director of the National Library of Rome. Lamenting that he had received only 150 replies to the two questionnaires, the first regarding the central cataloguing project for printed catalogue cards related to Italian works, accompanying the publication of the newly launched bibliography, he took the opportunity to provide further encouragement and to highlight the relative advantages in terms of savings in resources and the guarantee of quality descriptions (GIRALDI 1958). This demonstrated an awareness of the themes of bibliographic cooperation and control, a foretaste of the reasoning for the then-unimaginable SBN, which served as the basis for the imminent National Bibliography. Giraldi fostered this desire and developed the project, together with Casamassima and Maltese, continuing the work of Irma Merolle Tondi. In 1956, it emerged that the then-director had presented a report in Trieste on the centralised cataloguing of Italian publications, a matter that she had been studying since 1953 (MEROLLE TONDI 1956), which followed in the wake of the previous efforts of the Bulletin, which for years had accompanied the standard publication with an edition in which the back of each page was blank, allowing recipient libraries to cut out and glue the sheets onto its own catalogue cards.
As Diego Maltese confirmed, change was in the air. When he joined the National Library on 13 October 1958, the BNI had just been launched, under the guidance of Casamassima, who appointed him to oversee registration. Thanks to their work, the BNI featured a number of innovations, marking the beginning of a long chapter in history, including the presence in the bibliography of what was known as a “record” of secondary entries by author and title on which to base both the indices of the series and all the cards required for the catalogue. Then there was the ongoing and critical application of descriptive and subject cataloguing: the “Rules for authors” (DIREZIONE GENERALE DELLE ACCADEMIE E BIBLIOTECHE, 1956) and the Subject Indexing System, both from 1956, as well as the organisation and cataloguing of material in accordance with Dewey Decimal Classification (RICCI-GIUNTI, 2009). Lastly, the printing of cards in international format for all the catalogues of the BncF and all subscribers.
But how many people were involved in the annual publishing of an average of 12,500 entries between 1958 and 1968 (LUCARELLI, 1998), and who were they? There were around ten permanent figures, members of BncF and Union Catalogue personnel, specialised from the outset in the fields of descriptive and subject cataloguing. Maltese recalls a number of names, including Rosanna Mauri Mori and Carla Guiducci Bonanni, who collaborated in the subject indexing of scientific works. The same number of staff is mentioned in a report by Merolle Tondi from ‘53-’54, in addition to seven volunteers including Luigi Crocetti. The report from ‘65, the first by Casamassima as director of the BncF, listed 18 permanent members plus 15 pieceworkers, the temporary workers of the time (who would all subsequently be employed via competition). A total of 33 staff members, practically half of the entire workforce but still few compared to the 175 at the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek of Munich, which held a similar role as national bibliographic agency in a country with a similar publishing output. Consequently, the report also stated that there was a delay of eight months between the books being received by the library and the publishing of the BNI. Casamassima and Maltese both shared this attentive and active focus on the international situation (CASAMASSIMA 2002). The latter, who was director of the BNI from 1964 to the early 1970s, had previously participated, together with Francesco Barberi, in the Conference on Cataloguing Principles (Paris 1961), and would also be present in 1969 in Copenhagen as one of the cataloguing experts involved in drawing up the ISBD. In 1966, the BNI was salvaged from the waters of the “blind stream”: “my old wooden desk floated in the water. Miraculously, the National Bibliography was still sitting on the desk […] It was not even wet” (GUIDUCCI BONANNI 2011). The publication suffered no interruption because the colleagues at the BNCR had completed the relative year, and activities recommenced in Florence in 1967, driven by an extremely strong will to recover. The event marked a lengthy period of international participation that, in this case, focused on the productive areas of restoration works, initial studies into automation and, in January 1968, of the significant experiences with shared bibliographic cataloguing between the Library of Congress and the Italian National Bibliography (MALTESE, 2004). This was demonstration of the ability to draw on tragedy as an opportunity for renewal that provides significant cues for the present.

Bibliography

From Jahier a Casamassima: subject indexing and the Subject Indexing System

The history of subject indexing at the National Central Library of Florence began in the 1920s, in the period immediately following the First World War, which was a critical time for both the institution and the nation as a whole. A staff shortage caused by a twenty-year block on public competitions and a persistently elderly workforce (JAHIER 1964) led to the decline of the Bulletin of Italian publications received by legal deposit, which was unable to provide a full description of all the material received, let alone track down any works that had escaped the legal deposit process altogether. Despite all this, the director Angelo Bruschi courageously launched the process of subject indexing, with a view to enhancing the descriptions provided by the Bulletin with access by subject. In the first issued of 1925, the index of authors was, in fact, preceded by the new alphabetical index of subjects, the appearance of which was accompanied by neither any declaration nor any explanation.
The same year, Angelo Bruschi encountered an excellent apprentice and soon-to-be precious assistant, Enrico Jajier, a new employee from the Susa Alps, who had come to the National Library of Florence after spending four years in the trenches and who quickly became one of the few Italian experts in cataloguing by author and by subject, soon overseeing the entire production of the Bulletin. He was the one who coined the Italian term for subject indexing, “soggettazione” (JAHIER 1939) and who drafted the subject index for public consultation by modifying the subjects of the Bulletin.
Anyone looking back at the subject indices for the 1925-1935 period would see the growing number of descriptions and relative subjects, and would, above all, note the forming of critical considerations and method. It was only after a year of intense activity, making constant and critical comparisons with the most modern foreign tools while seeking an Italian system in line with the relative traditions and the language of the country, that Jahier managed to encapsulate the fundamental aspects of subject indexing in five rules (JAHIER 1938). In accordance with these principles, the subject of a work is not a noun, perhaps combined with an adjective, but rather an “established formula” that expresses, in a regular order, the main subject matter, the viewpoints from which said subject is considered, time, space and form. Precise indications were also provided on what importance should be given to geographical aspects.
From 1936 onwards, having been promoted to cover other roles, Jahier was no longer responsible for the Bulletin, but he observed and supported its potential developments on a national scale with the distribution of printed alphabetical and subject catalogue cards, and both outlined and began to work on the creation of a “national subject index” together with the nation’s leading institutions, the BncF, the National Research Council and the National Library of Rome. However, once the war was over, the Ministry had other intentions, and Jahier, embittered after having been excluded from the project without explanation, resigned from the library in 1950.
With the BncF left as the only organisation responsible for compiling an alphabetical subject index, Emanuele Casamassima, a librarian who came to Florence after a brief period in the manuscript sector of the National Library of Rome, replaced him.
The Subject Indexing System came to be characterised by the culture and mindset of Casamassima, although he based it on the theoretical and practical experience imposed by Jahier. Speaking at the 7th Congress of the AIB, in 1951, Casamassima addressed the general criteria, the streamlined structure and the linguistic choices, pointing out that the aim of the Subject Indexing System was not to offer the field of cataloguing a series of items to be applied mechanically when setting up subjects, but rather a method and accompanying terminology. The Subject Indexing System was to be published in 1956 (SOGGETTARIO 1956), “the only Italian professional tool that […] was presented on an international level” (CROCETTI 2008). However, in the preface, Anita Mondolfo, ex-director of the National Library and one of the project’s greatest supporters, stated that “we did not feel we were fully prepared to be laying down rules” (MONDOLFO 1956): right from the title, the introductory notes written by Casamassima only addressed the consultation of the tool, without providing any guidance for librarians in setting out subjects on the basis of the examples provided.
As a tool, the Subject Indexing System has proved to be astoundingly long-lived, despite the aims of its authors, who hoped that it would soon be followed by updates and modifications, but the lack of a “grammar” weighed heavy on the field of subject indexing in Italy. The Italian National Bibliography constantly drew on this instrument for fifty years, compensating for the lack of rules (LUCARELLI 2008) and, albeit in a limited manner, handling updates in terminology.

Bibliography

• Casamassima 1951
  Emanuele Casamassima, Soggettario e soggetti nella Biblioteca nazionale di Firenze, «Accademie e biblioteche d’Italia», XIX,II n.s., 1951, pp. 378-382.
• Casamassima 1956
  Emanuele Casamassima, Note introduttive alla consultazione del Soggettario, in Soggettario per i cataloghi delle biblioteche italiane, a cura della Biblioteca nazionale centrale di Firenze, Firenze, Il cenacolo, 1956, pp. XV-XXXIX.
• Crocetti 2008
  Luigi Crocetti, Casamassima e Firenze: dal Soggettario all’alluvione, in Il nomos della Biblioteca: Emanuele Casamassima e trent’anni dopo, a cura di Roberto Cardini e Piero Innocenti, Firenze, Polistampa, 2008.
• Jahier 1938
  Enrico Jahier, Catalogo a soggetto e schedatura centrale, «Accademie e biblioteche d’Italia», XII, 1938, pp. 281-292.
• Jahier 1939
  Enrico Jahier, Appunti di terminologia bibliotecnica, «Lingua nostra», I, 1939, n. 30, pp. 80-82.
• Jahier 1964
  Enrico Jahier, La catalogazione centrale corrente. Storia di un’esperienza, «Accademie e biblioteche d’Italia», XXXII, 1964, pp. 246-265.
• Lucarelli 2008
  Anna Lucarelli, Dalle nutrici ai masterizzatori: lavorando con il Soggettario, in Il nomos della Biblioteca. Emanuele Casamassima e trent’anni dopo, a cura di Roberto Cardini e Piero Innocenti, Firenze, Polistampa, 2008, pp. 117-130.
• Mondolfo 1956
  Anita Mondolfo, Prefazione, in Soggettario per i cataloghi delle biblioteche italiane, a cura della Biblioteca nazionale centrale di Firenze, Firenze, Il cenacolo, 1956
• Soggettario 1956
  Soggettario per i cataloghi delle biblioteche italiane, a cura della Biblioteca nazionale centrale di Firenze, Firenze, Il cenacolo, 1956.Aggiornato a Dicembre 2011

From the first Italian classification systems to today: the role of the BncF

“It would be a good idea to study […] the decimal-type cataloguing system, so that we could also launch our catalogue cards in countries that have already adopted it”, said Irma Merolle Tondi, the director of the National Central Library of Florence, in 1956 (MEROLLE TONDI 1956). This marked the modern application in Italy of the Dewey Decimal Classification (DDC) system, one of the most widespread library classification systems, which was created in 1876 for arrangement purposes and suited to ordering the catalogue cards in catalogues by subject or organising records in a bibliography. Alberto Giraldi, the successive director of the BncF, went into more detail over the ordering of catalogue cards with the decimal classification system: there were differing opinions on the useful number of digits, and Giraldi maintained that three digits, which are insufficient for cards in a complex and analytical systematic catalogue, were “more than enough for the ordering of cards in the National Bibliography and for the creation of systematic catalogues”. He did, however, recommend that each specialised library base its registration system on its own needs (GIRALDI 1958). Later on, when classes attributed to individual documents became complete, the concept was again proposed and implemented by Diego Maltese, and an abridged system was used for the distribution of the cards in the issue of the BNI, “with a view to achieving suitable complexity and substantial coherence” (MALTESE 1989).
In 1958, in its role as National Bibliographic Agency, the BncF began the drawing up of the new Italian National Bibliography with cards ordered in sequence on the basis of the Dewey Classification system. For the first year, the notation from the 15th edition was used, generally with three-digit numbers, and class names were adapted to the subject on a case-by-case basis. The same went for the 1959 issues, based on the 16th edition. In 1961, the BNI standardised the headings attributed in previous years, drawing up a reduced classification system based on the 16th edition and used until 1967. In 1968, it adopted the 17th American edition, which, two years later, formed the basis for the second edition of the system, which was succeeded by a third edition in 1977 based on the 18th American system. These so-called “tables” did not offer a translation of the original text, but rather notations used by the bibliographic agency as a practical tool. The BNI cards, available for use by Italian libraries, were the means by which the system was communicated.
In 1986 the BNI, the pilot centre of the SBN, decided to adopt the full editions of the DDC, also in view of the absence of an Italian edition. With the 19th American edition, it set up an “archive in line with the Dewey classes of the BncF Hub, consisting of the number present in the tables […], which were opportunely decoded” (PARADISI 2003). With the adoption of official standards, the BNI group served as a pint of reference within the SBN, handling “the structure of the online classified catalogue, the standardisation of language for headings, and the correct use of terminology […] required for deepening awareness and application of the DDC” (RICCI 2001). It collaborated with the Data Processing Centre (CED) of the BncF in the creation of SBN programmes for class archiving. In 1994, it adopted the 20th edition of Dewey, the first full Italian edition, which was published in 1993, curated by Luigi Crocetti and Daniele Danesi.
A further milestone came when the BNI itself was the curator of the Italian editions, under the coordination of Luigi Crocetti: the 21st, (published in 2000), the abridged 14th edition (published in 2006), and the 22nd, (published in 2009). This role was made possible thanks to the scientific knowledge developed through direct contact with the world of national publishing. Currently, the BNI uses DDC 22 and the abridged DDC 14 for some series (DEWEY 2006). As always, programmes for the adaptation of the classified SBN archive (GIUNTI 2001) are drawn up for new editions. For the benefit of SBN partners, the BNI updates the archives of classes and their verbal translation, carefully selecting the terms used, to facilitate searches in OPAC, which has been enhanced by the interoperability “between the verbal equivalents of the classification numbers and the subject indexing terms, a goal set by the new subject indexing system, which provides for the indexing of the interdisciplinary DDC number for each structured term” (GIUNTI 2005). Future editions of the DDC will be handled by the Research and Semantic Indexing Tool sector, which, on the basis of a recent feasibility study, will be able to handle the development of online versions of a Web Dewey intended for the entire Italian library service system.
For many years, this task has been bolstered by creative international exchange, through stimulating relations with the American publishers of the DDC, with the curators of other national versions, and thanks to the presence of the BncF in IFLA commissions and European committees.

Bibliography