Culture as a fundamental asset of the Pirelli of yesterday, today and tomorrow: and the inauguration of two other libraries, theHeadquarters in Milano Bicocca and the Bollate plant, which complement the one already successfully opened within the Pirelli industrial center in Settimo Milanese. Basically a library for each branch of the group in Italy. The christening of the one in via degli Arcimboldi, very modern but full of links with a multi-centennial entrepreneurial history, with at the center the large table designed by Giò Ponti in the late 50s for Pirelli which had moved to the skyscraper in front of the Central Station, which for everyone it is still today the Pirellone, it fits, like that of Bollate, in the ambit of # ioleggoperché 2016, the reading promotion campaign organized by the Italian Publishers Association (Aie) of which Pirelli is the main partner and which this year focuses on the development of promotional activities and the creation of company and school libraries.
They were present at the ribbon cutting, which took place today at the Pirelli headquarters Marco Tronchetti Provera, executive vice president and CEO of Pirelli, the councilor for culture of the municipality of Milan, Filippo Del Corno, the managing director and director of the Pirelli Foundation, Antonio Calabrò, the president of the IEA, Federico Motta. The event saw the special participation of Lella Costa, in her capacity as honorary member of Fondo Scuola Italia, the non-profit association which, acting as a bridge with businesses, has the objective of finding resources and materials to make available of Italian schools.
Spreading culture by bringing books to factories and workplaces is a goal that has always seen Pirelli at the forefront. Important places of aggregation, culture and innovation, company libraries are born as a stimulus for employees to read, get information, collect ideas and exchange ideas. Because factories, and workplaces in general, are special places where culture is also produced. Science fiction books, detective stories, best sellers, essays and children's books will represent an initial endowment of around 3.500 volumes between the Milan headquarters and the Bollate plant: a number that, when fully operational, will exceed 7 units. Many titles, and of different genres, which go beyond the traditional concept of company libraries intended to contain only volumes relating to the company's business.
It was the Pirelli employees themselves, through the community of passionate readers of Milano Bicocca and the active involvement of those of Bollate, who selected the first 1.000 titles considered "inevitable" on the shelves of the new libraries. To these were added the volumes donated by the company RSU, those purchased by the company and the books chosen by the Pirelli Foundation, custodian of the Pirelli archive and its corporate culture.
The libraries of the Pirelli Headquarters and that of Bollate join that of Industrial Center of Settimo Torinese, recently connected with the library of the Piedmontese municipality. A partnership that allows employees to be able to count on 110 volumes, 220 magazines, 14 newspapers, 4.500 films and documentaries on DVD, 4 music CDs and 400 audio books.
A number that has grown exponentially thanks to the vast heritage of Sbam, the "library system of the Turin metropolitan area" (11 million books, traceable and bookable based on the ErasmoNet catalogue) and of which the Pirelli library has become a part becoming the first private library to be incorporated into a public library system.
The opening of the new libraries is in the wake of a tradition which sees Pirelli open the first company library almost 90 years ago. In 1928, in fact, the first book endowment was made available to personnel enrolled in the "Dopolavoro Azienda Pirelli", which even then could count on a portfolio of around 800 titles. Equipped with a real regulation for the loan and return of books, the library was closed for a period during the war, to reopen its doors in 1945 with about 3 volumes chosen by the workers through the catalogs made available by the company. In the following years the library continued to grow until it reached 10 thousand volumes in 1956, thanks also to the creation of a reading room dedicated to newspapers and magazines and to the consultation of books directly from the shelves.
At the time, book loans reached 50 units, a tangible sign of the interest of employees in reading. Pirelli had also made available one for its researchers and engineers Technical-Scientific library consisting of about 16 thousand volumes on rubber and cable technology from the 2010th century to the present day. This collection has been available to the public, students and researchers at the Pirelli Foundation since XNUMX.
