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.

History

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.

Membership

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.

General Assembly, Boards, Officers, Committees

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.

Publications

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.

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 20^th, the 21^st and the abridged 11^th and 12^th;
• 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).