BNI open and collaborative: how and why

Abstract

A consequence of the economic crisis that affected Italy in the last years is a significant decrease of economic resources for libraries, especially for those depending from the Ministry for Cultural Heritage. In this framework, the National Library of Florence and the National bibliographic agency, belonging to it, suffered a significant reshaping of their output, the Italian National Bibliography (BNI), due to the reduction of people in its editorial staff. The search for solutions to cope with this difficult situation lead to two main decisions, both based on the meaning of public service and on the cooperation principle. The first had the result of the free and online publication of the Italian National Bibliography, starting from May 2016, so that aligning the BNI to other National European Bibliographies. The latter lead to a collaboration project that on one side confirmed the role of the National Library of Florence as bibliographic, technical and editorial coordinator, and on the other opens the National Bibliography to a certain number of libraries with specific traits (legal deposition coverage and subject specialisation), so that contributing to a collaborative Italian National Bibliography.