Ricerc@Sapienza

Italian libraries from the post-war reconstruction to the National Reading Service (SNL). The history of Italian libraries from the Unification (1861) until the end of World War II has been extensively studied over the past 15 years. In contrast, the period from 1945 to the institution of Regions (1970–1972) and of the Ministry for Cultural Heritage (1975) is still understudied and has not been the subject of much research and discussion. While the reconstruction was well managed, the development and modernization of libraries lagged behind, because the gap in literacy and especially in post-elementary education was very wide. Only during the Sixties – with a better standard of living, fair investments in public education and the new unified secondary school (from 1963/64) – Italy approached the conditions of a liberal/democratic developed country, though in a mostly conservative political and cultural climate and with deep inequalities between the various areas of the country. The reforms of the early Sixties came late, and often remained stalled or insufficient. Thus, the strong growth in culture, education
and libraries that we see at the very end of our period was soon to deal no longer with a positive economic climate and temperate social conflict, but with the explosion of political conflicts and the incipient economic crisis.