Giulio Einaudi, libraries, and the book system: history, models, and perspectives starting from Come un ministro per la cultura by Chiara Faggiolani

Abstract

The paper proposes some considerations related to the contents of Chiara Faggiolani’s book Come un ministro per la cultura: Giulio Einaudi e le biblioteche nel sistema del libro (2020), dedicated to Giulio Einaudi’s intellectual and editorial personality, and focusing on the relationship between the ‘Dogliani project’ and the different environments of the Italian ‘book system’ of the early 1960s. The project, accomplished with the inauguration of the Luigi Einaudi Library in 1963, highlights the attempt to organically integrate architectural space, library collections and service management. What triggered this integration was Giulio Einaudi’s vision, shaped by his father’s passion for books and by the charisma and extraordinary intelligence of the members of the group called the ‘einaudiani’, who were the protagonists of the cultural season of a country, Italy, that was struggling to come to terms with massive cultural, economic, political and social transformations.