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The paper reflects on La biblioteca pubblica e la sua reputazione, Maria Stella Rasetti's last book, published by Editrice bibliografica. The reflection starts from the reputation as object of study of different disciplines (such as communication, marketing, economics, sociology) and analyzes the importance of library reputation, closely associated with identity and image. Rasetti identifies four classes to place Italian public libraries and proposes a model to measure library reputation, adapted from business models, which uses personalized questionnaires for each class. The paper analyzes model validity and contextualizes it in the field of user satisfaction, performance and libraries impact. The hope is that measuring reputation can help public libraries to build a new narrative that overcomes public administration stereotypes of which they are victims, and to equip citizens with useful skills for work, everyday and social life, making them active and conscious protagonists. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Social exclusion in later life involves the marginalization of older adults from all aspects of life in today's society and requires a significant change in public and social policy in ageing societies. Particularly excluded from all aspects of life are (older) people suffering from some form of dementia. Public library services are tailored to meet the informational and recreational needs of all population groups and are particularly suited to help overcome problems of exclusion. However, the research indicates that dementia library services are still in their very beginnings in most countries, including Croatia. This paper presents the goals and results of two projects carried out by the Department of Information Sciences of the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences at the University J. J. Strossmayer in Osijek, Croatia. Those projects deal with information needs and public library services of people with dementia (in particular, Alzheimer's disease) and their caregivers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper illustrates the results of a survey conducted in the period January-February 2023 involving the users of the Turin Public Libraries, an urban system currently affected by a significant strategic rethinking process. Through the analysis of the answers to questionnaire provided by 3,926 people, it was possible to bring to light the complexity and the multidimensionality of the act of reading and to gather interesting information on three central issues: the process that leads readers to choose the book; the libraries' role in fostering and enriching the reading experience; the complementarity between book and other form of access to narrative world, both outside and within libraries. These cognitive elements can help both to improve the collection development policies and to favor the meeting between readers and collections, also through their integrated and transmedial organization within an enriched physical and virtual bibliographic space, which stimulates and enhances the reading experience. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the first part the paper illustrates the results of an analysis of the Italian editorial production on LGBTQ+ issues, limited to non-fiction for adults published between 2016 and the first half of 2021. Subsequently, the analysis focuses on the representativeness of these publications within the collections of the library systems located in ten large Italian cities. A comparative study is carried out on various aspects: years of publication, publishers, DDC classes, Conspectus levels, usage data. Moreover, through interviews with librarians a qualitative survey is also conducted, to bring to light additional elements, including the reasons and criteria for the acquisition or the non-acquisition of LGBTQ+ titles. In conclusion, after a comparison with similar studies conducted in other geographical contexts, the author tries to understand whether cognitive biases are among the factors influencing the development of LGBTQ+ collections. Bringing out any bias is fundamental to make librarians more aware and to emphasize the professional ethics and the principles of plurality on which the concept of public library is based. This type of study also allows to obtain detailed information elements to be taken into account in projects aimed at implementing recommendation systems that exploit the potential of Artificial Intelligence and, in particular, of machine learning: it should not be forgotten, in fact, that algorithmic biases reflect real-world biases. temi e analisi [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Social exclusion in later life involves the marginalization of older adults from all aspects of life in today’s society and requires a significant change in public and social policy in ageing societies. Particularly excluded from all aspects of life are (older) people suffering from some form of dementia. Public library services are tailored to meet the informational and recreational needs of all population groups and are particularly suited to help overcome problems of exclusion. However, the research indicates that dementia library services are still in their very beginnings in most countries, including Croatia. This paper presents the goals and results of two projects carried out by the Department of Information Sciences of the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences at the University J. J. Strossmayer in Osijek, Croatia. Those projects deal with information needs and public library services of people with dementia (in particular, Alzheimer’s disease) and their caregivers.