University Council for Art History writes to Franceschini: reopen libraries and archives

While almost all activities in Italy have reopened at full speed, times are still very difficult for culture, and this is especially true for places that do not render economically, starting with libraries and archives, which are still closed in most parts of Italy. For this reason, the National University Council for Art History wrote a letter yesterday to Cultural Heritage Minister Dario Franceschini, University Minister Gaetano Manfredi, and MiBACT’s general directors of Archives, Libraries and Education (Anna Maria Buzzi, Paola Passarelli and Mario Turetta, respectively), to strongly urge the reopening of archives and libraries. Below is the full text of the letter.

"Honorable Ministers, Dear Directors,

the signatories of this letter wish to represent to you the great difficulties that the Covid-19 crisis has brought to research and teaching, in particular with regard to one of the most important services in this sector, that of libraries and archives: vital also for the historical-artistic studies cultivated by the writer, and which in times of crisis cannot but represent a factor of growth and development for the entire country.

At a time when the country has now restarted, it is still libraries that remain almost completely closed. In the rare cases in which some of them have instead experimented with some form of reopening - at severely limited hours and with various non-effective services - special legislation has intervened to further halt their activities. This is the “non-prescriptive” provision that came from the Institute of Book Pathology (a non-medical but book preservation institute), which recommended a 10-day quarantine for any books that might be consulted. One can easily imagine what devastating consequences this mechanism has: users, who no longer have free access to the shelves even in places where this was permitted, must not only reserve volumes, which are always limited in number, but must also submit to this very strong functional slowdown, which in fact reduces to very little the possibilities of true, rapid, and competitive research such as is internationally indispensable today.

The Italian Library Association has expressed strong concerns about the 10-day measure, representing that the Istituto Superiore di Sanità, thus the highest body in the national health field, has expressly defined the survival period of the virus on paper at a maximum of 3 days. We do not understand why only libraries (and archives) are subjected to these draconian regulations, when bookstores-which handle the same objects, have them touched, consulted, put back, etc.-have been open since mid-April without any kind of restriction, and every other commercial establishment, from cafes to restaurants, cinemas and even Bingo halls, is now free to work while still complying with the prescribed safety regulations.

Restricted hours and incomprehensible other impediments seem to us to be affecting an area, that of study in libraries, which is vital to the world of research and teaching, particularly the university world that the signatories of this letter represent. Ph.D.s, projects, and all kinds of scholarly publications, not only academic but museum and conservation, have been at a standstill for months, and no authority has yet foreseen and communicated what the horizon is for the scholarly community to measure itself against. The fear is that this sector will be left behind because it is not directly connected to the structures of trade and industrial production. It is, however, as Minister Franceschini has always maintained, one of the most crucial and characterizing areas of the nation’s life, that “oil” that is not only made up of entrance fees to museums, but must be integrated with a great background, academic and conservative, for which Italy has a leading place in the world.

For the National University Council for Art History,

President

Fulvio Cervini"

University Council for Art History writes to Franceschini: reopen libraries and archives

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