The Uffizi Prints and Drawings Library
The Uffizi Prints and Drawings Library is focused on the study of the prints and drawings collection of the Uffizi Galleries and consists of circa 20,000 titles. This library is, actually, a specialized section of the larger Uffizi Library, but with its own location, where it is also possible to consult the Uffizi prints and drawings collections upon approved request.
The library was initiated by Pasquale Nerino Ferri (1851–1917), the ‘founding father’ of the Uffizi Prints and Drawings Department at the end of the 19th centuryFootnote 1 . Here one can find many rare editions, such as exhibition catalogues that date back to the early 20th century, books with personal dedications donated to the library by artists and scholars and real “art objects” such as engraved books, printed in limited editions, sometimes with the manuscript signature of the artist written inside.
Internship programme
Our internship program began in 2009, promoted by the Uffizi Education Department and aimed at showing Florentine secondary school students, aged 16 and 17, the internal workings of the Uffizi libraries.
In 2015 an Italian law, also known as Buona Scuola (the ‘Good School’, n. 107/2015)Footnote 2 , made this type of internship compulsory in all our secondary schools. Now cultural institutions are called upon to become educational partners with the secondary schools, together with companies, sports associations and volunteers, professional areas such as medicine and the law, etc.
Secondary school students are required to do a total amount of at least 200 internship hours during their last three years of study; they can, generally, choose where they would like to spend their first ‘work experience’.
Internship description
The following description of our internship programme is an abridged version of an article, recently published, in Italian, in Biblioteche oggi, by this author and two colleaguesFootnote 3 and presented as a lightning talk at the 7th International Art Libraries Conference in Florence in October 2016.
At the Uffizi Library, we developed an organizational formula to best run the program. We decided that, rather then dedicate a staff member full-time to this project, we would share the tasks between a librarian-tutor and two art history guides. We opted to have two small groups, of no more then three students at a time, each month, with a five day programme of mornings only.
Before commencing with each group, we have a meeting with the students' teachers, explaining what type of activity the students could do and how this program could be linked to their school-work. The teachers are always very interested in the fact that the students will learn how to carry out online bibliographic research and will, in the meantime, develop a greater knowledge of art.
First of all, the students soon notice that there is a close relationship between the publications in the library and the masterpieces in the Uffizi Prints and Drawings Department. In fact they are given the opportunity of handling several types of publications, such as exhibition or museum catalogues, books of essays about artists, specialized reviews and others.
After a short practical explanation, the students are taught how to recognize various parts of publications such as the title page, colophon, bibliographies, the back cover. Then they describe the new publications in an electronic duplicate of the library inventory register, in “Excel” format, and choose which library section the book belongs to; in addition to this, they have to note if the publications are already present in our IRIS OPAC.Footnote 4
The students are very good at finding information on their smartphones, but have no idea what an OPAC is. They are shown that a lot of information on the availability of books and reviews in libraries is not yet available online, but may well be in the near future, thanks to projects involving librarians from all over the world.
The students are given the opportunity to practice on our IRIS OPAC, and other OPACs, such as the Italian SBN (National Library Service), the Library of Congress OPAC and OCLC's Worldcat, where our OPAC IRIS is periodically uploaded.
The students are introduced to well known book digitalization projects, such as Google Books, explaining to them that they only make available those books that are no longer covered by copyright. Then, just for fun, we search for their favourite titles and authors.
The pre-cataloguing library work that the students complete during their time in the library is then left for me to upgrade onto the IRIS OPAC; the students work with such enthusiasm that I am usually updating for days, after they leave.
During their work experience, the students take a lot of photos: of our reading room, with people at work, of our exhibition room, and also of the publications they have worked on. These photos will be part of the ‘Power-Point’ presentation that they will then present at school.
The benefits of the internships for the library
The library derives real benefits from the enthusiastic efforts of the secondary school students. These young people produce notable quantities of ‘not specialized’ but necessary work that is basic for the life of a library. This includes preparing a duplicates list, carrying out targeted research on the OPACs, writing the bibliographic information into the inventory register, writing inventory numbers and class marks inside the books, and helping with small book moves within the library. The real secret is to let them work in small groups of two or three students at a time, so they can work as a team. Obviously they are so young that they can't be left to work alone; the discreet presence of a tutor is always available to respond to questions and doubts.
An opportunity for cultural growth
At the end of the week the students go on a guided tour, generally to the Uffizi Gallery or to the museums of the Palazzo Pitti. They finally see the masterpieces of the ‘Galleria’ that they often have only seen in their school books. They are often astonished by the real dimensions of the paintings, such as the Maestà, by Giotto or Cimabue: these masterpieces look so small in their books, but are, in reality, large and majestic, when you are standing in front of them. With these observations, the students begin to experience the concept of beauty in art, and they begin to understand that images can also help them to express deep and very personal emotions.
Once, during a tour in the Uffizi Gallery, one of the students told me that his favourite painting was Caspar David Friedrich's ‘The Wanderer above a Sea of Fog’, a German Romantic masterpiece, where a young man, seen from behind, looks out over a large sea of fog from a craggy mountain.Footnote 5
The student chose this image because he identified with the young man in the painting. In fact, the sea of fog represents the typical state of mind of a boy his age, where nothing is clear and everything is possible, in a word, ‘adolescence’.
