The tradition of the small community library is not a long one in Naples. I remember years ago being amazed by the enormous National Library here and also by the presence of a number of valuable private libraries, all great resources for scholars and students. But I was disappointed at the lack of small city libraries like the ones I grew up with—a place not too far from my home where you could just go and do homework or browse for nothing in particular or maybe just sit and ponder why you were sitting all alone in a library on a Friday evening. If you were 14 or 15 years old, you were probably not thinking how intimately the magic of literacy had connected you with every other person in every other library in the world. That's fine, too, but connected you were. These places were, of course, libraries, but also focal points of community activities and, more philosophically, a sign that the community, itself, existed. Obviously, such a place has a rough go of it where a sense of community is weak—and it is still weak in Naples. There are historical reasons for this well beyond the scope of this entry.

In any event, it delights me to report that since the 1960s and 70s, a decent string of city lending libraries has grown up in Naples. From the literature provided by the city:

“The City Libraries Service coordinates the resources and activities of the 13 public libraries of the city through a network system. It also helps to integrate local libraries into the network of libraries in the whole Campania Region, thanks to the opportunities offered by the national library system. Cultural advertising activities are also carried out by organizing events and exhibitions within the libraries, thus widening the range of services offered to users and meeting the demands of local citizens who start to consider libraries as ‘friendly places’… [Besides lending books]…libraries organize reading groups under the surveillance of the personnel. Groups have weekly meetings, during which they read aloud and comment on significant texts of contemporary literature…This encourages the further development of interest in books, promotes literatures from foreign countries and above all turns libraries into places where people can have pleasurable personal and cultural encounters.”

That last phrase is particularly important in any effort increase a local sense of community within a city. The 13 libraries are generally out of the main center of the city in suburbs or in places where books and culture have not typically played a vital role in the everyday life of the citizenry.

I visited the one nearest to where I live—the Benedetto Croce Municipal Library. It is in the Vomero section of Naples and is situated in the basement of a large high school. Though it is not the school library, it is obviously handy for students. The librarian tells me that 60 or 70 kids come through the place in a day to do their school work, check on local activities (exhibits, readings, discussion groups, etc. held on library premises) or maybe just to hang out a bit. In this particular library, there are multimedia facilities including audio material for the visually impaired. Also within the system, there is already a gender-studies library on the premises of the new Civic Center, and in the works is a children's library to be located in the San Giorgio suburb of Naples. Part of the focus of the whole system is to appeal to those who are not, at least in Naples, tradtionally thought of as necessarily connected to the "world of books"—housewives and senior citizens, for example. That’s where growing the “community” comes in, the process of little by little filling in the gap between the family and the state It is a long and slow process, but I am certainly glad they have started.