Archives in the library: parallel worlds that meet?

Abstract

The contribution, starting from the observation that archives and libraries, despite being different and parallel worlds, wants to analyze the difficult relationship between the two realities through a diachronic reconstruction, highlighting the investigations and reflections conducted in Italy over time, and still in progress today , in relation to the complexity and ambiguity of this relationship, due also to the presence of funds and archival documents in libraries, and of documents and literary funds in the archives. The crux of ideal and practical relationships, therefore existing or desirable, between archives and libraries hinges both on normative and managerial aspects, but certainly also conceptual, and therefore it is as complex as it is urgent to try to dissolve it, proposing the meeting of these two worlds parallel thanks to the help of digital technologies and integrated platforms, in order to make the documentary heritage they contain accessible to an increasingly wider audience.