The Metelli Library's Historical Section

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The Historical Collection of the Metelli Library holds the oldest part of the monographic heritage of the Psychology Library of the University of Padua, coming from the old locations in Piazza Capitaniato and consisting of:

•  Modern books: a thousand volumes published from 1837 onwards, for the next century or so
• Ancient books: five eighteenth-century volumes (including a 1744 edition of Galileo's Works in 4 volumes)
•  Extracts from scientific publications - in particular, the articles of Vittorio Benussi

The works in this collection provide vivid evidence of the progressive development of scientific disciplines in the field of psychology during the 19th century and at the same time of the breadth of scientific interests and cultural horizons of the "pioneers" and founding fathers of the School of Psychology in Padua, in particular Vittorio Benussi, who established one of the first chairs of Psychology in Italy here.

The subject areas of the works are representative of various branches and main directions in psychology - pure, experimental and applied, especially in the clinical and therapeutic fields - but also of philosophical and scientific thought - especially in the medical, anthropological and biological fields (e.g. the theoretical debates on evolutionism). Among other things, numerous examples can be seen of how, at that time, very different subject areas were the subject of specialist investigation by the same author.

The language of the publications is mostly foreign: few texts in English, while those in French and German are 4 and 6 times larger respectively (reflecting the cultural dominance of French and then German in psychology and related disciplines during the period). Significant, however, in terms of the quantity and type of publications is the number of volumes in Italian (just under a quarter of the total), largely the legacy of another Paduan scholar of the period, Gino Melati.

The bibliographic and library value is in the fact that these are works whose authors are prominent names in the history of the relevant scientific disciplines and whose availability is in many cases difficult in Italy. In addition, many of the publications from before 1927, which Benussi acquired for the library, not only bear his signature but also handwritten notes and notes, sometimes of considerable length or prominence, often drafted - in some cases with accompanying drawings - with an almost miniaturistic calligraphic art.

The basic objectives of setting up the History Section can be summarised in two main aims:

• Preservation of documents involved in 
  • Retrieving individual volumes previously placed on open shelves (or partly closed on other shelves and the library's storeroom)
  • Checking their state of preservation and, where necessary, temporary "binding" (in paper cases of suitable composition)
  • Transferring of closed-shelf material to a specially identified space.

• Enhancement of the contents involved in 

  • Semantic cataloguing: the volumes were reclassified according to the APA's subject classification/location system, already in use for the library shelves open to the public, also arranging the works as far as possible in reasoned groupings by theoretical-disciplinary ‘subjects’ and, within these, by main authors.

  • Descriptive cataloguing in the online catalogue was checked, and the information entered and/or reclaimed.

  • Editing of online searchable lists of:

    • The works in the collection are sorted by subject/shelf location, with an indication of authors, titles (for those in German and French, an Italian translation was provided), year of publication, entry specifying the subject, state of preservation of the document and the possible presence of handwritten notes.

    • The authors of the publications with a brief indication of biographical details, disciplinary areas of research, nationality, indication of sites that can be consulted for brief bio-bibliographical information, possible presence online, on specialised sites, of full-texts of their works that can be freely consulted.