Italian libraries as seen in National and Regional statistics

This article offers an outlook of the Italian libraries system based ondata collected at national and regional level. After the unification, thenew Italian state met with a diversified system of public libraries. Theirvery number and basic characteristics were unknown. Since 1863, throughouta century, several studies have been conducted on a national scaleto fill the gap. When Regional autonomy was introduced in the 1970s,local surveys on libraries bloomed, but their coverage rarely reached thenational level. Due to the lack of a National Authority on Libraries, acomplete picture of the system, made of public (state, regional, municipal,etc.) and private libraries, with standard methods and comparabledata, is still to be attained.