The National Library Service, that groups together 450 national, regional and private libraries, has been functioning for the last 10 years. According to Signora Dina Pasqualetti, head of the information department of the National Central Library of Florence, this service will also be working as an on line public access link-up by 1997.
At present the link up already covers a huge quantity of books, including about 3 million bibliographic records. SBN will become a modern system that will help libraries to communicate with one another and, above all, will make it possible for other structures and private organizations to make purchases and loans. For the moment this service is free of charge but, once it is fully structured, it will definitely be included among the supplementary services approved by the Ronchey law and have to be paid for. It will thus be possible to obtain copies of books, only available in some other region, in any city library in Italy (where works for consultation only are concerned), or at home.
The CD-Rom containing about 600.000 titles from 1958 to the present day
The National Library also has a direct connection with the University of Florence and its archives contain 1 million records, registered from 1958 to the present day. The enormous amount of information that forms the data bank has led to access for research being triplicated in the last year.
It also produces a CD-Rom, available for sale on subscription, which contains about 600 thousand titles and is up-dated monthly. Moreover it publishes the "Italian National Library", a monthly magazine with all the available titles divided up into categories.
