La vertigine del catalogo, ovvero la rappresentazione di un infinito librario

Abstract

Andrea De Pasquale’s book offers an insight into the history of Italian librarianship at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries. The documentation found, analyzed and published opens up unprecedented glimpses; in fact, it allows us to reconstruct the path that led to the birth of the first national cataloging rules, launched in 1921, the result of a long reflection that has its roots in the eighteenth century. The author refers to the census of the catalogs of government libraries which took place in 1918 and the material sent to the Italian Ministry of Public Education by some government libraries in 1880. The questionnaires completed and invited to the Ministerial Commission emerged on the occasion of the reorganization of the Library’s archive central national team of Rome. They make it possible to check the state of implementation of the ministerial directives relating to the catalog and to outline a complete picture of the rules, types of card and file systems used by government libraries at the turn of the century.