The Library of Villa Montalvo collects in the prestigious seat that gives it the name all the resources of the municipal library service. The story of this service - until 2002 articulated on two seats: the municipal Library situated in piazza Matteotti, active from 1978, and the Gianni Rodari Library, for children and teenagers, with services specialized for educators, open from 1987 in via Garcia Lorca - has been characterized by a great quantitative and qualitative growth that has permitted the reaching of elevate levels in the performances of the services of public reading and in the development of the documentary services. The riunification of the service has corresponded with the exigency of being over the structural limits dictated by the separation of the two seats, that diminuished its efficency and the ulterior growth and to equipp for answering to the exigencies and the requests of a public in quick and constant evolution.
The Gianni Rodari Library was projected and realized in collaboration with the Tuscany Region as structure for children and teenagers, with the offer of documentary services for the educators. The library was inaugurated in 1987 with the aim to favourish the meeting between teenagers and books; for this reason in its realization were adopted advance solutions of fittings and image, strongly orientated to the exigencies of the young users. The library developed on a surface of over 600 square-metres on the first floor of the building that in via Garcia Lorca gives hospitality at the auditorium, the gym, the Garibaldi secondary school and the separated section of the Liceo Scientifico Agnoletti. The mission of the library, that has characterized the most significant "project", operative from the opening, was the realization of the meeting between the paths of the public reading and paths of the documentation, more precisely of the integration between traditional services of public reading and documentary services of collecting, elaboration and spreading of the information.
The new season of the book for teenagers
It's important to tell that the 1987 wasn't an ordinary year for the fortune of the book for teenagers; infact starts an extraordinary trend of development of the childhood literature in Italy, with the adfirmation of a presence of all respect in the publishing view and a great vivacity of the publishing market, thanks to choises orientated towards a constant reniew. The reniew starts - as noticed the writer Pinin Carpi - from the desertion of pedagogical proposals and from the readfirmation of poetical and emotional values, of books that fascinate and excite, thanks to a recovered weight of the "stories" in the ambit of the literary prpoosals for the teenagers. At these literature contains give their attention new authors that have proposed fascinating and passionate plots, intrigues ans suspense ans especially themes and events that bring to the problems of the childhood and adolescence, at the world lived by the today's teenagers. it's in this atmosphere, created by these events, from 1987, that are canalized the first steps of the library and the first numbers of the LiBeR magazine, that has been founded by it. The Gianni Rodari library, like many others italian libraries that have given a contribute to the growth of the behaviours of reading of the children and teenagers, has so been able to spread its own activities of support and promotion of the reading in a moment particularly favourable at their receiving. But now see which are these proposals and which are the strategies of spreading of the reading adopted by the Gianni Rodari Library.
The documentation of the publishing production for children and teenagers
The documentation of the publishing production has entrusted the library from 1987 with the buying and the putting at disposition of all the books for children and teenagers distributed in Italy and of their complete and deepened bibliographical documentation. All the library news are been documented through the CDS/ISIS software of the Unesco. The users were been able to examine the news, that are been exposed in shelves situated in the zone of entrance of the library, answer the basis of datums, obtain bibliographies and paths of reading also printed, borrow the pubblications. The service of documentation has been progressively enriched by a specialized section for educators and students, with a part of essays, periodicals, inventories, bibliographies, catalogues and documents of "grey literature" relatives to the themes of the childhood reading and literature. This section was member of the part of science of the education, with books and documents relatives to the sciences of the education, in their phsico-social, pedagogical and didactic components and, so, to the history and the critique to the young literature. The series of the informative and documentary proposals given by the library to the educators has been potentiated by the production of the LiBeR magazine and of Liber Database. LiBeR, quarterly of bibliographical information published by the library from 1998 has realized, presenting in every number all the bibliographical signallings of the pubblications distributed in Italy in the previous month, a bibliographical controll in the sector of the publishing production for teenagers, to assure to librarians, teachers and operators in the educational and cultural field the necessary instruments for selecting the books and proposing them to the young users. This documantary soul of the initiative is also open to the exigencies of the critical resource, proposing itself as observatory - laboratory of the phenomenons and tendencies that emerged from the growing publishing production for children and teenagers and this thanks to intervenation, bibliographies and reviews cared by famous experts. Liber Database, achieve of the all library news for children and teenagers published in Italy, distributed in subscription from the autumn 1992, has filled a lacuna of the market of the iautomatized information in order to the effective knowledgement of a sector of the publishing, permitting to public and school libraries, school, book shops, publishers, associations and centres of reasearch to consult, on their own personal computer, all the pubblications distributed in Italy. The achieve is usable both as bibliographical inventory and as source od derivate cataloguing. On these datums is always based the "LiBeR Relation" that every year, in occasion of the International Fair of the book for teenagers of Bologna, LiBeR has proposed to the operators of the sector: an instrument of work rich of concrete statistics indications on the going of the publishing production just finished. From 1996 LiBeR and Liber Database are producted and published by Idest that manages also the cataloguing that feeds the service of documentation.
The promotion of the reading
The promotion of the reading has represented another fundamental trend of work of the library with visits, paths of reading, meetings with authors, courses and conferences on the themes of the reading and the literature for the childhood, presentation of books. The relation with the school has been fundamental in the strategy of promotion of the reading planned by the library. In this activity are been integrated the traditional services of public reading with that doumentary of collecting and selective spreading of the information one's. The library has furnished to the educators of the school of the childhood, to the teachers of the compulsory education and to the school classes of the municipal territory services and activities on the basis of a annual programming:
services for the school classes: visits to the library, meetings of reading at loud voice of chose strory among the library news, paths of reading at theme, loan in class of the materials of the library, meetings with authors and illustrators. On average, every year, the services and the activities for the schools and the educators have registered the sharing of about 80 teachers and 1500 students
services for the educators: are been put at disposition the bibliographical and documentary resources of the library like the window of the news, Liber Database, the library part of science of the education and of critique of the literature for the childhood, the periodicals, the grey literature, the datas basis on CD-ROM, the courses of updating on the themes of the reading and the literature for the childhood. The most significant appointments of this trend of activities are been: L'avventura di leggere (1988), La natura da salvare nei libri per ragazzi (1988), L'apprendista lettore (1990), La narrativa nella scuola media (1991), Il libro di divulgazione nella scuola elementare (1992), Il libro di narrativa nella scuola media (1992), Li-bri nello zainetto (1993), I ragazzi tra libri e multimedialità (1998).
The children and the parents are been important referents in the promotion of the reading. Their involvement is effected keepin present the importance of the reading at loud voice and of the narrating and the habit to "read together" since the childhood. The most significant initiatives that have seen the sharing of children and parents are been: Raccontiamoci un libro, (1991), Mi piacciono i libri, Mostri di casa mia (1992), Ma questa è un'altra fiaba... (1993), Filastrocca del lunedì, Storie nuove in biblioteca (1994), Libri in scena, Sai adottiamo un bambino, Pagine di fragola (1995), Un libro, una storia (1996), Fantasia di storie, Aria di Natale (1997), Storie al tratto e... al galoppo (1998), ...E per merenda una storia (1999).
In theme of promotion of the reading an important appointment is constituted by the national Conferences "New signalls of reading" promoted since 1999 by the Tuscany Region and organized by the library in the Limonaia of Villa Montalvo.