BIBLIOTECONOMIA. — B. (or, as was also said with a term that did not catch on, bibliothecology) is the science (others say: the art or the service) of libraries, studying all their operations, from construction to administration. More briefly, b. teaches how to establish and operate libraries.
Some more or less scientific or rudimentary organization of libraries has always existed since collections of books first appeared: collections of books that are unorganized, jumbled together, without catalogues, are called warehouses or storerooms, not libraries. The concept of a library entails that of arrangement and service.
In antiquity, however, matters were handled rather empirically, in the sense that, to keep a library in order, an educated person, fond of books and endowed with qualities of order and precision, but not professionally trained, was usually sought out: hence the variety of organizational criteria. In modern times, that of the librarian has become a profession in its own right, requiring theoretical and practical training provided in special schools. These schools, called either schools for librarians or schools of b., provide instruction in all library services: construction and selection of premises, arrangement of furnishings, searching for and ordering books, accessioning, registration, classification, cataloguing, distribution to the public, consultation, reading, lending, verification, etc. They also teach supplementary disciplines to equip librarians with sufficient culture for their duties: history of the book, bibliography and bibliotechnics, knowledge of books, and ad hoc culture (in a music library, the librarian will be required to have knowledge of music).
The profession of librarian has thus also become autonomous from that of the paleographer-archivist, with which it had been merged in the recent past. The one attends to printed books, the other to manuscript documents.
In individual cloisters and at episcopal or chapter schools, manuscript books were catalogued and made available for reading according to rules and precautions, especially against readers with grasping or dirty hands. A bibliophile and librarian who spoke lovingly of books (philobiblon) around the middle of the fourteenth century was the English bishop Richard de Bury (born near Bury in 1287, died in 1345), a friend of another great bibliophile, Francesco Petrarca, whom he met at Avignon; while Pedro de Luna, who took the name of Benedict XII (d. 1424), reorganized the papal library of Avignon, establishing rules for the placement and classification of manuscripts.
These monastic libraries were the public libraries of the Middle Ages. At a Synod held in Paris in 1212, every religious Order was forbidden “to make vows against lending its books to anyone who might need them; since lending is numbered among the principal works of mercy,” and the “anathemas” binding manuscripts were declared null.
Care of books became a passion of Humanism, when Niccolò V established or re-established the Vatican Library pro communi doctorum virorum commodo.
To prevent theft of manuscripts, there, as elsewhere, the volumes were “chained” to the desk.
Amid the bibliophilic fervor, no small number of regulations were issued for the proper keeping of books. The duke of Urbino drew up regulations for his famous collection, and in every substantial library some rule was established and enforced. The regulations drawn up by the Benedictine Floriano Trefler (1483–1565), by the Jesuits Francesco Sacchini (1570–1625) and Giovanni Garnier (1628–1681), by Archbishop Monsignor Giusto Fontanini (1666–1736), and by the Theatine Paolo M. Paciaudi (1710–85) were printed; as late as 1863, the fourth edition of the latter’s work was reprinted in Rome: Il bibliotecario diretto nel formare, classare e continuare una pubblica biblioteca.
In the nineteenth century, concern with drawing up fixed and uniform rules for cataloguing prevailed in the field of libraries. The establishment of schools to train cataloguers and, more generally, librarians capable of handling all services was stimulated by more rational cataloguing; and this establishment marks the first half of the twentieth century.
Schools had existed earlier as well: suffice it to recall the famous Ecole des Chartes, founded in Paris in 1821, and the Library School, opened at Columbia College (now the University of New York) by Melvil Dewey in 1887. In Italy, a school of Archivistics and Paleography existed in Florence from 1880. In 1923, the Ministry of Education opened various schools for librarians at universities.
Under Pius XI, a school of B. arose in the Vatican, in order to supplement the extensive work of technical modernization of the papal Library undertaken by that Pontiff. The School sought to place the professional and technical experience of the Vatican Library at the disposal, first of all, of the clergy and religious communities, for the training of librarians of seminaries, schools, and religious houses, and thereafter at the disposal of everyone. It came to supplement the teaching of the school of Paleography and Diplomatics, which had existed for half a century at the Vatican Secret Archive, and to facilitate and greatly develop the implementation of the instructions already issued, in 1902, 1907, and 1923, by the Secretariat of State to the Italian bishops for the orderly maintenance of archives and libraries: instructions drafted, with his well-known expertise, by Fr. Francesco Ehrle, then prefect of the Vatican Library.
The courses of the new School, begun in 1934, were attended by ecclesiastical and lay students of every nation. The subjects taught were established as follows: bibliography, cataloguing and classification, general arrangement and library services, with additional lectures on the history of the book, the use of photography, the preservation and restoration of printed works, etc.
The purpose of this reorganization is to make the books, periodicals, prints, photographs, etc. of a collection as useful as possible, for the sake of social utility, through a readier and broader service to scholars, the library being understood as intended not only to collect books but also to serve readers. This purpose gives the librarian a new character, no longer understood merely as a guardian of treasures, but also as a host to those who seek to treasure them. Reading informs, forms, and recreates; and the librarian collaborates with the reader in selecting the suitable book and collaborates with schools in educating pupils.
Students of the Vatican School of B. have already reorganized and directed ecclesiastical libraries in several countries; and the Norme per la catalogazione degli stampati, drawn up by the Vatican Library, have beco-
mecome the School’s principal textbook, and have been translated into Spanish, English, and French, and applied also in non-ecclesiastical libraries on both sides of the Ocean (v. CATALOGO; CLASSIFICAZIONE, sistemi di).