Established in 1962 by the National Agency of Popular and School Libraries of Rome, named after the writer and literary critic Antonio Baldini and created according to the most advanced criteria of library science, the library stood out in the 1960s for modernity, functionality, and updating of collections. In 1977, after the suppression of the Agency, it was acquired by the State and assigned to the Ministry for Cultural and Environmental Heritage, then a very recent institution (1975), and took on the current name of Antonio Baldini State Library.
From its beginnings, the Baldini library institutionally set as a primary objective the “friendliness” towards users, already at a time when this was certainly not universally recognized as a value.
Hence, in the rooms, already in the ’60s, the arrangement of book collections with open shelving and in classified order, that is by subject, in order to facilitate the reader as much as possible in searching and usage, and to allow them to find titles they did not previously know existed; also the brightness and airiness of the rooms (certainly allowed by the favorable location in the greenery of Parioli and the modernity of the architectural structure); also the very furnishing of the reading rooms, which until the ’80s even included lounge corners, with low tables and armchairs, a feature that unfortunately had to be abandoned over time in order to increase the available seats.
This “friendliness” of the structure indeed leads to notably significant attendance statistics: average daily attendance of 150 people, with peaks of monthly attendance around 5000 users. For this reason, it was necessary to regulate entry and manage users with automated systems (since 2012 the Ermes system owned by the National Central Library of Rome has been used).
