The library

The Origins

The origins of the Central Library of the Medical Faculty of the University of Padua are linked to the name of Professor Vincenzo Pinali, a professor of Clinical Medicine from 1857 to 1875. He is known for introducing the use of the stethoscope in the Paduan University. At his death, he left a large part of his substantial estate to the University of Padua to establish a medical library there. The first location of the library was in some premises of the old convent of S. Mattia, just adapted to the School of Medicine (1873), and the personal library of Pinali was the first collection to be included, followed by successive donations from the libraries of Vanzetti, Fanzago, Malacarne, Meneghini, Tebaldi, Bosma, which today constitute a large part of the Ancient Section of the Pinali Library.

Little is known today about the history of the library during the first half of the XX century. After the School of Medicine of S. Mattia was demolished in the first decade and the current anatomical buildings were constructed on the same site, the library found its place on the top floor of the new building complex. After the last conflict, it was reorganized on the initiative of Professor Achille Roncato, professor of Biological Chemistry, and through the efforts of Professor Loris Premuda and Mrs. Lea Greselin, who was the first librarian of the medical faculty. In the 1950s, the library acquired the legal status of a university institute, and in 1963 it was divided into an ancient section and a modern section. The Ancient Section was annexed to the Institute of the History of Medicine. It thus assumed an eminently historical function and today houses one of the most important collections of historical-medical books in our country. The Modern Section, on the other hand, arose concurrently with the birth of the university hospital and was intended to serve for research, teaching, and assistance. The first Director of the Modern Section was Professor Michele Arslan, professor of Otorhinolaryngological Clinic, who led it from 1963 to 1979.

The birth of Pinali Moderna

In 1963, at the end of the construction of the University Hospital, Professor Michele Arslan wanted and organized the Modern Section from Vincenzo Pinali's legacy. After him, under the direction of Professors Luigi Chieco-Bianchi and Romano Tenconi, the Pinali Library adopted autonomous computerized bibliographic management programs activated on a local network, and since 1987 has been integrated into the bibliographic management system of the University, participating in the SBN network. One of its peculiar characteristics was the cataloguing of abstracts (about 2,000 per year), which until the spread of the Internet allowed for a differentiated consultation of works, especially prevalent in biomedical monographic production.

Along the same lines, the Pinali Library produced the first Italian Medical Subject Heading in print in 1977, with a 2nd edition in 1995. The Pinali Library also carefully updates students on the use of library electronic resources: since 1993, it has been organizing specific courses for medical students. The Pinali Library has always paid great attention to the most up-to-date tools for research and teaching in medicine: initially by listing over 3,500 Internet sites of medical and medicobibliographic relevance (linking to libraries, catalogues, protocols, e-journals, forums, newsgroups), then using web 2.0 sharing methodologies to develop blogs, podcasts, personalized search engines, to automatic updating services from selected sites, creation of learning objects, and digital collections.

The Library Today

The Pinali Library is located in an eighteenth-century building in the hospital area, consisting of three floors renovated in 2001. Its commitment to updating and attentive support, especially for research, has led to the decision not to keep all the library materials on-site, preferring to focus on making recent materials and online services accessible. Publications before 1990 are kept in the New Archive of Legnaro (NAL), from which they can be requested. The library is heavily frequented by students who find a quiet and well-equipped study space there. There are 21 fixed PC stations connected to the Internet on-site, and wireless networks are active in all rooms for those who want to use their equipment. The Pinali Library provides numerous online services.
It maintains exchange relationships with other Italian and foreign libraries to integrate the documentation provided on-site with that held by others, of interest to our scholars. The Pinali Library also provides training on the use of services and resources of the University Library System regularly; it organizes courses/workshops on Pubmed, the main bibliographic database in medicine, on other tools useful for retrieving documentary sources and bibliographic management, and holds seminars on information literacy and related critical issues in the medical field.

The Medicine Library Consortium Since 2002, the Pinali Library, together with the libraries belonging to the Departments of Medicine and Surgery, has joined the organization for Library Consortia of the University System (SBA), an organization aimed at standardizing front office and back office services to ensure users easy and wide access to scientific information. The availability of scientific journals online has led many institutions to reconsider library service spaces, often converting them wholly or partly into assistance or research destinations. Several Departments over the years have closed or downsized bibliographic services and handed over part of the heritage to be preserved for posterity to the NAL. The push towards the "without-walls" library type, completely electronic, has so far materialized in the project of digitizing anatomical tables from ancient books belonging to the libraries of the Consortium.

From the Italian text of Prof. Ambrogio Fassina