For all libraries and those who study in them

When I submitted my master’s thesis last year, I decided not to include acknowledgements at the beginning of it. I thought that all the people and situations I would have thanked for getting to that point were too many, with a message that would have been hard to make sense of. Indeed, there are so many factors that drive people in what they do, and a catchy dedication can only be a creative and romanticized exercise. There is nothing wrong with that, but it was not what I had in mind.

In this post, I would like to write one of those missing dedications: for the libraries of my life and the people that I saw there. But, to explain the reason behind such a dedication, I will need to take a step back, to explain how my relationship with them started, and in the process, share a bit of story about my education.

Exterior of Biblioteca BAUM, Venice

The story of my relationship with libraries, or lack of at that time, started before university. Indeed, during high school, my study did not involve them at all. I remember that I went together with some friends a couple of times to Ennio Flaiano library, a library in the Tufello neighbourhood of Rome, which last year I rediscovered after moving back to Rome from Venice. It was not distant from where my school was, and, although the building is nothing out of the ordinary in terms of architecture or services, the atmosphere there was pleasant. I remember that there were a lot of people studying, but this communal aspect, which later I realized as something that fills me with joy, did not strike me at the time. I think I was more dragged by my friends then, and it was not something that came out of my initiative. At the end of those five years, the study for the final exams (In Italian Maturità) soon became the largest effort I had undertaken at the point, but I never went even once to a library. My study was mostly individual, only sometimes involving going at a friend’s house.

I don’t think I had any strong personal reasons why I decided to study at home, only that it was the comfort zone for most people at that age. Staying in the family home you had been living for all your life comes with comforts it is hard to get out of, unless you find yourself in new situations that can make it easier to change. And indeed, this was partly the case for the subsequent years, and fully for the years after.

Biblioteca “Pierangelo Garegnani”, Roma Tre

During my Bachelor’s, I started going to the “Pierangelo Garegnani” economics library of Roma Tre University. It is part of a very modern building and the architecture, as it is visible in the photo, was breathtaking. I was tagging along with my friends/classmates after lectures, if they were not leaving. Outside of those moments, the long commuting from my family house in the opposite side of the city, made it hard to go there only to study. After some years though, I became friends with Lavinia, Marta and others that really liked studying at uni. For a couple of exam sessions, we studied there almost every single day. Doing 1h-1h15 by transit twice a day, during the week, was not easy, but I still remember that period as the happiest moment of my Bachelor’s years. I was motivated in the study, I was socializing, I was productive, I felt great.

It is important that I immediately talk about this issue of motivation. At the time, more than now, I needed others to get motivation for my studies. Not that I was not interested in the topics, but seeing other people studying was removing the many distractions I had. Moreover, this satisfied my social needs, which as a moderately extrovert person, are definitely non-zero. I don’t remember exactly how I felt during high school, but I know for certain that in university studying with people was something I cared deeply about. Nonetheless, those happy moments in the economics library and in general in the study areas of the building, were mostly dependent on other people’s presence and not something I would have done alone.

Then Covid hit in 2020. This was a huge demarcation moment for my life, negatively in the short-to-medium term, but positively long term. It was a deep reorganization of myself and my goals, which may be the topic of another post. However, the impact on my study, as one may guess, was pretty severe. All the motivation I got from fellow students stopped being possible with the lockdowns in Italy.

It was very hard finding the drive to open manuals at home, and also my path was more confused, and delay led to delay in my exams. After a while, as I mentioned, I was able to turn this around into a positive self-improvement, realizing that Covid was just a trigger for things I had past due to solve. Despite the disconnection from my peers and a big delay, I was able to finish my degree, with a good thesis and good grades.

CFZ Zattere, Venice

The next chapter of my life was moving to Venice for my Master’s degree. Being the first time I was living by myself, this independence pushed me much more often out of my apartament. It took a bit of time to build my social circle there, but after some months, it became strong. With regards to study, both the topics and the situation helped me a lot to go faster. However, also my approach had changed.

I was not spending much time at home during the week, since my life was at the university, from morning to evening. With time, I was deciding more and more to go studying in the library even alone. As my social circle grew, I also found out friends like Giada, that would study with me every single day, also in the weekends (of course right before the exams, not months before, we were not this crazy). In group, with Gabriele, Alessandro, Giovanni, Camilla, we would have breaks together, have lunch, and maybe organize things after the study to grab a drink or something else.

University of Venice’s libraries are really nice and they, of course, have the huge plus of being within one of the most beautiful city in the world. Their entrances are in front of the canals and the famous campos that everyone that visited Venice remembers. We switched from staying at BEC economics library and BAS scientific library, when we had lectures in those buildings, to our top independent picks of BAUM humanities library and CFZ linguistic library, for the other days. It was frequent in the weekend with Giada to stay in BAUM in the morning, then have lunch at the canteen, and have a nice walk along the canals of Venice after lunch to get to CFZ. And a couple of times, we even went to the beautiful Marciana national library directly on Piazza San Marco, with Camilla and other friends.

Biblioteca Nazionale Marciana

These libraries were filled with people, especially during the exam period, and there was a sense of a shared goal. Everyone was there for a reason. Of course, distractions were always possible, chatting too, but that is fine and I don’t believe it is even healthy to remove those completely. However, people chose to be there. People chose to commute, day by day, and stay there, instead of being in their comfy room (maybe for a student less comfy, but still). Staying at home is not always true comfort, and sometimes people need and want to share spaces with others of all backgrounds to feel that they are not alone persuing an objective. This is what a communal experience means for me.

Furthermore, this helps in understanding who surrounds you. You see that people are in the same boat as you, are anxious, scared, lazy, but you and them… you all try to go forward. You also realize that there are interesting people out there, but also people that are scarier or crazier. That is what a society is. Being disconnected from those around us can only be an obstacle to ourselves and in general to the way we understand the world.

In those two years, I finished all my exams on time, even in advance. It was definitely different from my Bachelor’s. Nevertheless, after some months I had to move back to Rome since my room lease in Venice expired. And that is when I got scared again. I had stuck in my mind the period in Rome during Covid. Oh God. Will I face the same fate?

Biblioteca BAUM. “Feathers will lift men, as birds toward the sky”, Leonardo, Writings

During that summer, my family split the time between our house in Rome and our tiny country house in my mom’s hometown of Velletri, not too far from Rome. When in Rome, I became lazier with going to the library compared to Venice, since I was not used to it. I was not a student of Rome’s universities and my friends were not studying anymore, so my only option was to go to municipal libraries. I really had a stigma for those, like the Ennio Flaiano library I mentioned earlier, and Fabrizio Giovenale’s. Opening times are really bad compared to university libraries, especially those in Venice, and some spaces are not well equipped (e.g. outlets and Wi-Fi). But the days were passing, I was getting frustrated about not being able to do too much at home, and I had a feeling of loneliness. It was time to get out there, and I am happy I did.

I started going to both of them, sometimes for half day, sometimes even going to one in the morning, and the other one in the afternoon. This was to match the limited opening times, unfortunately. Sometimes, I was alone, but most often some people were there. And even if I did not know them or even speak to them, I felt supported, I felt less lonely, and more productive and motivated.

When we moved to Velletri, there it was much harder. Our house is very isolated and is between two towns, the larger one of Velletri and the smaller one of Lariano. At the beginning I was a bit fearful of trying out the libraries. I needed to borrow a car, find parking, and understand how the library access and opening times worked. Was it worth it? I can study at home. Let me try. No okay, I was still having the same feelings.

Biblioteca Augusto Tersenghi, Velletri

I quickly became a frequent user of the beautiful Velletri’s Augusto Tersenghi library. I had to go with the car in the morning traffic, park it on a steep hill to find a spot, before 9 otherwise also that spot would have been full, and walk for 10-15 minutes. Despite the annoyances, I went there almost every day. It was great. I saw so many young people there, university students, hanging out in the cloister of this ex-convent, or inside the library. They were either studying alone or reviewing material together. The Velletri that I often find dead, was now less dead, or actually, it was alive. It was like a village where there was a meeting spot, like a bar, and everyone was there. Amazing.

Then the summer timetable kicked in, and times got more limited. What’s stopping me now? I switched between Velletri and two new additions to my library list: Lariano’s and Cisterna’s libraries. These towns are even smaller than Velletri, and both libraries came with a very cozy feel to it. Most times there was barely someone there studying with me, which was not ideal, but they were good patches for the strange opening times regardless.

Study room of Biblioteca di Cisterna

After that period, I finished writing my thesis, the latest part of which while moving to Amsterdam, where I live now. I was even checking for how the Amsterdam’s library system worked after I arrived, but then I realized that the close deadline did not allow for a communal experience this time around. I submitted my thesis from my new tiny room in Amsterdam Nieuw-West, and of course there was nothing wrong with that. However, after now eight months of not studying in a library, I still can’t forget the sense of community, motivation, shared purpose that it can give. And thank you to everyone that was sharing that space with me.