Established in 1962 by the National Entity for Popular and School Libraries of Rome, named after the writer and literary critic Antonio Baldini and created according to the most advanced bibliographic criteria, the library stood out in the 1960s for modernity, functionality, and the updating of its collections. In 1977, after the dissolution of the Entity, it was acquired by the State and assigned to the Ministry for Cultural and Environmental Heritage, then very recently established (1975), and assumed its current name Antonio Baldini State Library.
From its early days, the Baldini library institutionally set as a primary objective a “friendliness” towards users, even at times when this was certainly not widely recognized as a value.
Thus in the rooms, already in the 1960s, the arrangement of the book collections was on open shelves and in classified order, that is, by subject, in order to facilitate the reader’s search and use as much as possible, and to enable them to find even titles they were not previously aware of; also evident is the brightness and spaciousness of the rooms (certainly allowed by the favorable location in the greenery of Parioli and the modernity of the architectural structure); the same furnishing of the reading rooms, which until the 1980s even included lounge corners with low tables and armchairs, a feature which unfortunately had to be abandoned over time to increase the available seating.
This “friendliness” of the facility indeed leads to attendance statistics of significant note: average daily attendance of 150 people, with peaks of monthly attendance around 5000 users. For this reason, it has been necessary to regulate entry and manage users with automated systems (since 2012 the Ermes system, owned by the Central National Library of Rome, has been used).
