A project of complete revision and reorganization of the bibliographic collections held by the Botanical Garden (Orto Botanico) has been underway for about a year, involving the librarians of the Botany branch of the Sciences Library (University Library System), who are responsible for cataloguing and administrative tasks, and the curators of the Orto (University Museum System), who handle document selection, space planning, and reshelving of the volumes.
The project was initiated to meet the curators’ need to reorganise the spaces at the Via Micheli 3 premises and to make both existing documents and recent donations available to users (technicians, researchers, interns, and thesis students) in an orderly and systematic manner.
The activities carried out so far include:
- Classification and subject indexing of all works, respectively with the Dewey Decimal Classification (DDC) system and the Nuovo Soggettario (Italian subject indexing system), respectively
- Retrospective cataloguing, i.e., entering into the online catalogue the volumes already in possession but not yet included in OneSearch
- Cataloguing of volumes recently donated to the Botanical Garden
- Reshelving of all volumes according to the DDC on the new shelves installed at the Botanical Garden premises, thus arranging them by subject.
Thanks to this fruitful collaboration between the Library System and the Museum System:
- the entire library collection of the Botanical Garden will be available for research, study, and professional training by technical staff working at the Garden, visiting researchers, interns, and thesis students who frequent the Garden on a daily basis
- users of the Library System, both institutional and external, can request to consult the volumes from the Orto through the Botany Library directly via OneSearch, by logging in and clicking on the "Request" link (available in the “Services” section of each volume’s record).
