B006788 - HISTORY OF THE BOOKS AND OF THE LIBRARIES

Italian

The course covers the historical development of printed book as a product of a technology and highlight the aspects of production, distribution and consumption within society. The course also provides an overview of the history of the libraries in Italy from the Middle Ages to the present with the analysis of different types (private libraries, public libraries) that have alternated in time to form the contemporary reality

Marco Santoro, Storia del libro italiano. Libro e società in Italia dal Quattrocento al Novecento Milano, Bibliografica 2008

Lorenzo Baldacchini, Il libro antico. Nuova edizione aggiornata Roma, Carocci 2007

Alfredo Serrai, Breve storia delle Biblioteche in Italia Milano, Edizioni Silvestre Bonnard 2006 (Il sapere del libro)

Giorgio Montecchi, Storie di biblioteche di libri e di lettori Milano, Angeli, 2018

Paolo Traniello, Storia delle biblioteche in Italia dall’Unità a oggi Bologna, Il mulino 2014

Paolo Traniello, Contributi per una storia delle biblioteche in età contemporanea, Pistoia : Settegiorni, 2016.

The course provides tools to analyze the printed book as an artefact obtained through the use of technology both as a communication tool and allows to acquire skills useful not only in the field of librarianship and bibliography but also in all the humanities. Moreover, the historical and institutional knowledge of Italian libraries is indispensable for understanding the current situation of libraries, for their use and career opportunities in the sector.

Linguistic and historical standard skills

Lectures with the possibility of direct analysis of artifacts and scheduled visits to the city’s most important libraries

NO

An individual interview will verify, by means of oral questions, the achievement of the teaching objective by the student.

Book History: : definition, object and methods. The hand printed book. invention of the press with movable types; materials for printing: paper, vellum, silk; fonts, typographic ink, printig press.
The phases of the production of the book. Creation and design. Printing expenses. Dedication. Company to print. Publisher and printer. Editorial brand. Edition contract. The making of the book: the typography, the typographer, the stoneman, the format of the book, the forme. The tape case. The forme and book formats. The collational formula.
The typographic press and printing operations.
The sheet: edition, impression, issue and state.
The component parts of a book: the title-page, the frontispiece, preliminaries, the colophon.
Book ornamentation: decoration and illustration. The print page: the running title, catchword, signature, page dimensions.
The system of privileges.
The packaging of the book: the bookbinding.
The circulation of the book: the book trade: booksellers, stationers, colporteur.
Users of the book: readers, collectors and users.
Bibliographic control and civil and religious censorship.
Preservation of the Hand Press Book.
Description of the Hand Press Book.

The Library history: definition, object and methods. Chronological extremes of the course: from the Middle Ages to the twentieth century. The constituent elements of the library.
Libraries in the early Middle Ages: Cassiodorus and the experience of Vivarium.
The early medieval monastic libraries as an autarkic library system.
The Carolingian age: codes and libraries.
The expansion of Islam and its consequences; the birth of cities, the birth of the University.
The “Renaissance” of the twelfth century. Analysis of the consistencies of early medieval libraries and their composition.
Richard of Bury and the Philobiblon: from bibliophile library to academic library.
Pre-humanism and Francesco Petrarca.
The discovery of the classics; the library with plutei, the bibliographic canons of the humanists.
The birth of the movable type printing and its reflections on the history of libraries

Between Gessner and Possevino. The Council of Trent. The Society of Jesus.
The seventeenth century and the opening of libraries. The Angelica Library in Rome. The Ambrosiana Library in Milan described by Alessandro Manzoni. Private libraries. Cardinal libraries.
Gabriel Naudé and the birth of librarianship: the Advis pour dresser une bibliothèque (1627).
The eighteenth century between bibliography and collecting. The library ad publicam utilitatem. The Magliabechiana and Marucelliana libraries.
The suppression of the Jesuits. The french revolution and the libraries. The napoleonic suppression.
The first part of the nineteenth century: Leopoldo della Santa and Della costruzione e del regolamento di una pubblica universale biblioteca (1816). The libraries of the italian pre-unitarian states.
National unification and libraries. The suppression of religious libraries.
The Torello Sacconi’s inquiry. The National Library in Florence.
The Fascist age. The second post-war period and the second half of the twentieth century.