Patrimony

The Italian Women's Library is today the principal collection specialized in women's culture, gender and feminist studies.The Library has a collection of 30.000 books, 20.000 of which are already included in the SBN-National Library System Catalogue, and 495 periodicals, 141 of which currently published.

The main thematic areas documented are:
Feminism, history of political women's movements, gender and women's studies, rights, body, care, sexuality, politics, ICT and gender divide, fashion, work, new jobs, female creativity, art, literature, poetry, theatre, cinema, publishing, ethics, philosophy, psycology, psycoanalysis, religions, literary critics, conflicts resolution, migration and postcolonial studies.

The Library holds special collections:

1. The historical collection

The library's entire historical collection counts more or less 4.000 volumes out of 30.000, all edited before 1945. It's a unique patrimony, both for the quantity of material and for the highly specialized criteria. But it's also the remarkable result of a huge work of research on the traditions of women's culture in Italy.

The collection includes:

* Periodicals - 25 Italian newspaper headlines, edited between 1800 e 1900, among which: La donna, Vita femminile, Il Giornale delle donne, Cordelia, Madame. Of special importance, please note the rare "La donna fascista", the periodical of the Italian Social Republic.

* Books - 4.000. The most ancient is a XVI century volume on the education of women. There are also volumes of the XVII and XVIII centuries, although the majority of the collection consists in books edited during the last two centuries.

- A very important section of "reference": 350 biographical and autobiographical works, relative to famous Italian and foreigner women working in different fields: painters, musicians, actresses, saints, queens, benefactresses, poetesses, women of letters, scientists, politicians, etc. This section is enriched by a special collection of 150 letters (edited) exchanged among famous and public figures of the European cultural scene

- A significant section deals with the Italian literature and poetry and gathers the works by important authors, such as Sibilla Aleramo, Annie Vivanti, Ada Negri, Grazia Deledda, Cristina Campo, Neera, Anna Banti and less famouis ones like Clotilde Marghieri, Carola Prosperi, Camilla Del Soldato and the most recent as Morante and Ginzburg. Many of the volumes are first editions and autographed by the authors: they constitute a core group of works around which one could re-write the history of the Italian literature from a gender point of view. The collection gathers a remarkable number of works by foreign writers of different periods: from Madame de Stael to Lady Montague; from mary Shelley to Isadora Duncan and Christina Rossetti.

- La collezione comprende anche un numero consistente di opere di autrici straniere di differenti periodi: Madame de Stael, Lady Montague, Mary Shelley, Isadora Duncan, Christina Rossetti.

Generally speaking, the historical collection constitutes a precious source for the history of women, offering a great number of volumes on the first Italian and international Women's Movement (the classical texts by Emmeline and Christabel Pankrhust, Millicent Fawcett, Anna Maria Mozzoni, Anna Kuliscioff, etc), and on different aspects of the women's social, political and cultural history.

* "Grey" Literature

- A photographic collection of Italian artists portraits, taken between 1800 and 1900. Among them, of special importance are the ones of Wanda Capodaglio, Eleonora Duse, Emma Gramatica, Dina Galli, Maria Callas, Lina Cavalieri, Toti Dal Monte, etc. Many of the photographs are autographed.

- Posters, flyers, calendars.

- One original thesis, hand written, dated the half of the XX century.

2. The Sofia Library, a collection devoted to the literature for children and young girls, which counts 2.500 works written or translated in Italian, but also written in many different languages (including Arabic, Chinese and Spanish), and therefore constituting a real multi- cultural section.

The collection is in large part the result of donations: coming both from private female citizens who wished to leave a trace of their own spiritual and cultural formation; and from important organizations such as the Ente Fiere of Bologna which, as the organizer of the annual International Children Book Fair, gives to the library all the copies of the exhibited books

3. The Rosi Braidotti Fund, constituted by 150 works by contemporary feminist philosophers, written in different languages, which have been donated by the philosopher to the Association Orlando.

 

Historical archive

The archive of the Women's Documentation Centre in Bologna was first settled in the late Seventies and gathers material relative both to the history of the centre itself and to the history of feminist Italian and International groups and organizations of those years. The Association Orlando, which actually implemented the archive, has been focussing since the very beginning on the politics of exchange and networking with the multi-layered and variegated world of women. The archive occupies 60 square meters of materials now indexing with a special financial support of Carisbo Foundation.

The archive has a special section which gathers the documents relative to the Associations' administrative daily life and to the cooperation with the local and regional administrations. In particular, they are 305 folders concerning the Association , the Women's Library and the Server.

More recently, our staff is working at the project of gathering bibliographical material and documents relative to the period before the foundation of the Association. It's a small core of material relative to the last two centuries.