Italian Library Association (AIB) English Pages
The Italian Library Association
(Associazione
Italiana Biblioteche)
N.B. Most links are to pages in Italian only.
The Associazione Italiana Biblioteche is the professional association
of Italian librarians.
Founded in 1930, AIB is the only general library association in Italy,
the only National Association Member of IFLA, and by far the oldest and largest
association from this field in Italy.
The Italian Library Association was founded in 1930 as "Associazione
dei bibliotecari italiani" (Association of Italian Librarians), soon
after the first World Conference of Libraries and Bibliography held in
Rome and Venice in 1929. In the Thirties the Association was under the
control of the (Fascist) Ministry of Education, who appointed the
President, Vice-Presidents and Secretary.
After the Liberation, in 1946-1948, Italian librarians re-established
the Association as "Associazione italiana per le biblioteche" (Italian
Association for Libraries), on democratic bases.
In 1960, with a new statute, the name was slightly modified, taking the
current form "Associazione Italiana Biblioteche".
The Statute in force was approved in 1996,
with amendments in 1998 and 1999.
The members, some 4,500+, are mostly librarians, but membership is
open to libraries and other persons or bodies interested in the field
(e.g., LIS students, international libraries and other organizations,
private companies, etc.). Corporate bodies account for some 15% of total
membership.
Membership is also open to foreign libraries and librarians, but foreign
institutions, as all corporate bodies and students or friends of
libraries, are not allowed to vote in general Membership Meetings and
elections.
All members receive official communications, the annual
Librarian's Diary (Agenda
del bibliotecario), the quarterly journal Bollettino AIB, the monthly
newsletter AIB Notizie
and, in some regions, local newsletters.
The supreme governing body of the Italian Library Association is the
General Assembly or Membership Meeting ("Assemblea generale dei soci"),
usually held once a year at the National Conference. The General
Assembly approves the annual programme of activities and the budget, but
usually the balloting of executive boards takes place by mail.
Every three years, personal members (excluding students and friends)
vote for a National Executive Board, their own Regional Executive Board,
and other two national boards, the Board of Auditors and the Board of
Arbiters.
The seven members of the National Executive Board ("Comitato esecutivo
nazionale", CEN), in their first meeting, elect between them the
President and the Vice-President of the Association and appoint a
Secretary and a Treasurer (both usually, ma non necessarily, outside the
CEN).
Regional Executive Boards ("Comitati esecutivi regionali", CERs) are
established on the same lines, and are the main governing bodies of
Regional Branches ("Sezioni
regionali"). Regional Branches are now in the number of 20, one for
every Italian region.
The main advisory body is the National Council of Regional Presidents
("Consiglio nazionale dei Presidenti regionali"), consisting of the
President of the Association and the Presidents of all Regional
Branches, assisted by the Secretary.
The Board of Auditors ("Collegio sindacale") inspects the accounts of
the Association and the Board of Arbiters ("Collegio dei Probiviri")
judges disputes between members or governing bodies.
National affairs are decided upon by the National Executive Board,
while Branches are sovereign for regional matters. The President
represents the Association and acts for urgent affairs, while day-to-day
management is entrusted to the Secretary.
Besides governing bodies, the Italian Library Association has
Standing Committees ("Commissioni
nazionali") for the various library types or for permanent
professional fields and Working Groups ("Gruppi di studio", "di lavoro", "di
ricerca") for specific matters. All Committees and Groups are appointed
by the National Executive Board for the three-years term of their office
and may change in number and name with a new Board.
The active Committees and Groups are:
- Standing Committee for Academic and Research Libraries ("Commissione
nazionale Università e ricerca")
- Standing Committee for Children Libraries ("Commissione nazionale
Biblioteche per ragazzi")
- Standing Committee for National Library Services ("Commissione
nazionale Biblioteche e servizi nazionali")
- Standing Committee for Public Libraries ("Commissione nazionale
Biblioteche pubbliche")
- Standing Committee for School Libraries ("Commissione nazionale
Biblioteche scolastiche")
- Standing Committee on Cataloguing ("Commissione nazionale sulla
Catalogazione")
- Working Group on Antiquarian Books ("Gruppo di studio sul Libro
antico")
- Working Group on Legislative Issues ("Gruppo di studio sulle
Problematiche legislative")
- Working Group on Subject Indexing ("Gruppo di ricerca
sull'Indicizzazione per soggetto").
Main Activities
The aims of AIB's action are so defined in the Statute in force:
- a) to support the organization and development in Italy of
libraries and of a library service taking more and more into account the
needs of users;
- b) to act as a professional representative in all cultural,
scientific, technical, legal and legislative spheres, on any matter
which may concern a better organization of library and documentation
services;
- c) to promote, support and develop any action useful to
ensure a qualified professional education;
- d) to provide their own members with scientific and technical
aids for continuing professional education;
- e) to contribute in every place to directions and decisions
of library policy;
- f) to promote the observance of the ethical principles of the
library profession;
- g) to defend the dignity and the professional specificity of
librarians.
The main activities of the Italian Library Association are:
- active lobbying on behalf of libraries and librarians, at the
national level (now especially for a new general Libraries Act and for
the legal recognition of librarianship as a profession) and at the
Branches' level (towards regional and local government);
- international cooperation, especially within the European Union and
with Eastern-European and Mediterranean countries, with active
participation in the European federation EBLIDA, involvement in many programmes
of the European Commission (LIB-2, Telematics Applications, Publica,
ecc.), and support to libraries interested in electronic information and
in European R&D projects (formerly as National Awareness Partner of the
IMPACT programme and member of MIDAS-NET, the information network
supporting the programme Info2000);
- a public campaign about reading to and by children,
Nati per leggere ("born to read"), in
co-operation with other partners;
- management of a
Register of Italian professional librarians, from 1998, now
including some 600 certified members;
- a
Labour Observatory
("Osservatorio lavoro e professione"),
devoted to lobbying and consultancy on labour relations, recruitment of
librarians, etc.;
- study, field surveys, research, development of guidelines and
professional tools, information and debate on any matter of interest for
library and information services;
- training courses, organized by
AIB Headquarters (usually 2-3 days full-time on specific subjects) or by
Regional Branches (basic courses also, sometimes in cooperation with
Regional Governments or other bodies), and study travels;
- national conferences, held
annually, from 2000 in the Rome Bibliocom meeting, including an
exhibition of products and services for libraries (Bibliotexpo); from
2002 a Spring Conference is held, organized by a Regional Branch;
- other conferences, seminars, etc., organized by the Headquarters or
by Regional Branches, and meetings and stalls in library and publishing
events (e.g., the International Children's Book Fair in Bologna and the
Book Fair of Turin);
- a Website (AIB-WEB) and a discussion list
(AIB-CUR),
with over three thousand
subscribers;
- a special Library,
founded in 1961, with some 8,000 books, 117 current serials, some
manuscript papers, CD-ROMs, grey literature, photographs, etc.;
- books and journals publishing (see below).
A full annual report (in Italian) from
1994 is available on the Web.
The Italian Library Association
issues
two periodical publications:
- the quarterly journal Bollettino
AIB, born in 1961, including full articles (with extended English
abstracts), shorter notes, book reviews and a current bibliography of Italian LIS literature,
cumulated at the end of the year in a complimentary CD-ROM with the
retrieval software Zetesis;
- the monthly newsletter AIB
Notizie, born in 1989, featuring brief articles, conference reports,
columns on various subjects (European activities, Internet news, etc.),
official documents or communications and a calendar of events.
In some regions, the Branches issue a local newsletter.
As regards books, the Italian Library Association is the publisher of
various series and monographs (available titles are around
150):
- a pocket Library Encyclopedia (ET: Enciclopedia tascabile), with
each number devoted to a single subject (twenty titles published so
far);
- the official Italian edition of the Dewey Decimal
Classification (Classificazione decimale Dewey), in the
unabridged as well as in the abridged versions, with special expansions
and options: so far the editions published are the 20th, the
21st and the abridged 11th and 12th;
- the official Italian edition of some ISBDs (General, for
Monographic publications, for Non-Book Materials);
- Italian translations of other international guidelines (e.g., IFLA's
Guidelines for public libraries);
- manuals and handbooks;
- conference proceedings;
- guides to special libraries (government libraries, art libraries);
- a series of reports (Rapporti AIB);
- a series of small pamphlets on specific subjects of library practice
(Note
informative).