Let’s start from the AIB

The AIB is a light organization (we are almost all volunteers), but also complex and very extensive, and this is its, our, main strength: here we meet intelligence and passions of generations of librarians with different sensitivity and origin, equipped with different skills and attitudes, which together offer a broad picture of the many abilities today committed to supporting research, learning, active participation of citizens in community life, of bibliographic resources’ protection and enhancement and that give a clearer perception of the fundamental identity, richness, social and cultural depth of our diverse profession through the sharing of fundamental values and the commitment to contribute to associative activities, and also of that great ability, working together, to withstand decades of political and planning disinvestment on libraries, a disincentive that is not only proven by cuts in funding and by reforms that have often ‘forgotten’ them, but is often supported by a considerable part (fortunately not all) of the public leadership, flattened on the administration of the existing situation or pledged to please the political leaders of the moment.