Teca del Mediterraneo: putting a library on the border

Abstract

Created in 1994, Teca del Mediterraneo, Multimedia library and documentation centre of the Regional Council of Puglia, has so far provided unrestricted access to the public, along the lines of the Unesco Public Libraries Manifesto. A few years later a new unit, the so called Institutional Communication Workshop, was put into place by bringing under the same management both the library and the institutional communication services. Its mission is the involvement of citizens, schools and other subjects in activities and projects aiming at promoting the awareness of the local identity and culture in a broader sense. To do so, specific reference services targeted at patrons both in presence and online, information literacy courses and annual workshops on intercultural issues were seen as the accomplishment of the motto «knowledge increases capability», an explicit reference to the Nobel Prize Amartya Sen’s capability approach, defined as the choice of focusing upon the moral significance of individuals’ capability of achieving the kind of lives they have reason to value.