The local public library among municipality, region and state: a dispute with no real disputant

Abstract

Writing about library law may seem a rather theoretical approach to the library world, but the principles and orientations identified by the law actually affect the connective and organizational tissue of local public libraries, and they do it in a quite substantial way. Public libraries are – to all intents and purposes – institutions intended to provide a public service, and in providing that service they're influenced by the law. Sometimes it is a good law, sometimes it's not, and sometimes there's just no law at all.
In Italy, the existing regional library law is amazingly static, repetitive and obsolescent. It is a huge set of laws passed during the 1980s, and sometimes adjusted during the last decade in order to adapt them (with no substantial changes) to the new Code of the Cultural and Landscape Heritage, Legislative Decree no. 42/2004. These laws are still based upon principles and aims well out-of-date, and if we don't want to waste the investment done so far it is now necessary to proceed with a completely new public library law, also in consideration of the changes occurred in what we call “the information society”.