The “C’eral’acca: information desk for the disabled” Documentation Centre opened its doors at the Humanities Library of the University of Perugia on 16 November 2015 and remained active for two academic years (2015/2016 and 2017/2018), with alternating morning and afternoon opening hours until June 2018. Eight young people with disabilities, Down syndrome, took part in the project as documentalists/librarians. All the information about the Documentation Centre was posted on the home page of the University’s Library Services Centre (for example a brief description, opening hours, addresses, contacts, the catalogue of monographs and journals, events, initiatives and more).

The experience, already recounted, together with its promoters and protagonists, in the article “Il Centro di documentazione C’eral’acca: il racconto di un’esperienza innovativa presso la Biblioteca Umanistica dell’Università degli Studi di Perugia”, likewise in Studi Umbri [link https://www.studiumbri.it/conoscenza/il-centro-di-documentazione-ceralacca-il-racconto-di-unesperienza-innovativa-presso-la-biblioteca-umanistica-delluniversita-degli-studi-di-perugia/] , was the subject of a further study at the conference “Bibliot-equa-mente. A good practice for an inclusive University”, held on 12 November 2018 in the Aula Magna of the Department of Philosophy, Social and Human Sciences and Education, where the final results of the project were presented [link to the programme http://www.csb.unipg.it/files/webmaster/Avvisi/bibliotequamente_loc.jpg]. What follows is the second part of that account presented during the conference.

In both the first and the second year the young people, supported by specialised tutors who had themselves been trained beforehand by us librarians, followed every stage of the work in the library, and in particular the journey of the book from purchase to shelf: they identified the bibliographic material to be acquired and catalogued it in a spreadsheet, a simplified database with the essential, obligatory fields of cataloguing, author, title, publisher, and so on. They arranged the books and journals according to a method of subject indexing that met their own needs and made it easy to locate a given topic on the shelves. Once the items had been labelled, they were made available for home loan. In order to make the material catalogued and shelved by the young people visible, and therefore consultable by users, it was decided to put the spreadsheets online, making them accessible through the page dedicated to the Documentation Centre on the home page of the Library Services Centre of the University of Perugia.

In the second phase, which took place in the 2017/2018 academic year, work continued along the lines described above but also addressed new aspects. For instance, the Service Regulations of the C’eraL’acca Documentation Centre were drawn up, based on the University’s library service regulations. Very diligently and patiently, the young people read the regulations and put forward proposed amendments concerning home loans: a loan request can be made by means of a paper form rather than an automated one, while reminders and overdue notices are handled by email; more generally, all the material, journals included, was made available for loan.
The most distinctive and defining work of this second phase, however, concerned the young people’s participation and involvement in front office activities, in direct contact with the public. In set shifts, and supported by the library staff and by their tutors, they carried out the various tasks normally performed at the desk of the Humanities Library: they helped with home-loan procedures, printed and cut the information leaflets distributed to users, helped staff to label the books purchased by the Library and to enter statistics on library visitors into dedicated files, gave information on how UNIPASS works, the University of Perugia app that allows access to the libraries by smartphone, cut out the little cards printed with the app’s QR code, put up and replaced posters, and finally were involved in and guided through the search for bibliographic material requested by users.
Again working in shifts, they then helped with surveying, reordering and arranging the books on the shelves, checking whether the books were in their proper places according to shelfmark and flagging any problems or gaps.

As part of the Humanities Library’s activities, in May 2018 Fabrizia Lopilato presented her book of poetry «Incanto di parole» (“Enchantment of Words”) within the “Letture senza crediti” (“Reading without Credits”) project, an initiative conceived by the library to encourage students to read beyond the demands of their studies, and consisting in recommending books to read. Among these, then, was «Incanto di parole» too, a small book of poems, a brief journey into the silence of the night where our dreams of hope are so often born. “This book speaks of true emotions that come from the heart,” reads the note written by Fabrizia, “emotions that express feelings of friendship… In the silence of the night are born the thoughts and the words of my poems.”
The young people then developed an interesting initiative that they called “Banca del libro” (“Book Bank”), addressed to all those who have been and will be glad to donate to the Centre one or more books and/or journals on the themes of accessibility and inclusion.

Finally, they helped to research experiences relating to disability, publicising on the website dedicated to the Documentation Centre two such initiatives: “Altrove” (“Elsewhere”), a documentary film whose protagonist, Simone Brescianini, a young man with Down syndrome, recounts a journey of his to Malta, a journey towards the conquest of his own independence and autonomy; and “La lampada dei desideri” (“The Lamp of Wishes”), a voluntary association founded in the Rome district of Magliana which has carried out, among other projects, the refurbishment of the “Dario Di Marzio” neighbourhood library, a local library run by people with disabilities.

So much for the account of the stages followed and the work carried out. But what was the role of the Library? The librarians placed their experience at the service of the project: they took part in all the activities described so far, training the tutors and the young people, organising their work at the planning level and providing, where necessary, the tools indispensable to carrying it out.
They drew on their expertise above all in rethinking and adapting organisational models so as to take account of the young people’s needs; they listened and sought to understand those needs, proposing appropriate responses, and they were ready to adapt procedures where necessary in order to make it easier to learn every stage of the work in a library. The world of the library is indeed increasingly complex today, increasingly computerised, increasingly bound up with electronic resources and the world of the internet; and yet the basic principles that move a library remain always the same, namely to respond to needs for information and knowledge and to make every kind of information promptly available to users. Following traditional techniques though they were, the young people helped to provide users with all the responses that a proper library service requires: by drawing up lists of newly acquired books, for example, published regularly on the website, they produced a kind of catalogue; or, using email, they sent out reminders for overdue loans, a service normally carried out automatically by management software. In performing the tasks entrusted to them, they thus also acquired computer skills, for instance in the use of word-processing programs, spreadsheets and email.

The human environment of the library, the relationships with the staff of the institution and the dealings with the public also allowed the young people to experience an important and happy form of socialisation. A world of new relationships was created for them, one that, as the days passed and human bonds grew stronger, became ever more the world of their daily life, their workplace, with rhythms and commitments to be met together with their fellow colleagues. The value of the librarians’ experience was therefore, to venture a bold metaphor, that of a thread for a necklace of pearls: our experience was the base, the hidden binding that joined together and gave a sense of joyful belonging to the world to these eight pearls, eight young people who lit up with enthusiasm for the work in the library and who acquired skills that we hope they will be able to draw on in the rest of their lives. The thread of knowledge led the librarians to share their experience with the young people, and made it possible to help make the University of Perugia more inclusive.

Other articles on the project:

• Sabrina Boldrini, Il Centro di documentazione C’eral’acca: il racconto di un’esperienza innovativa presso la Biblioteca Umanistica dell’Università degli Studi di Perugia, in Studi Umbri 9,1 (2017)
• Moira Sannipoli, University and Third Mission: a Documentation Centre for social inclusion, in Sergio Pace, Marisa Pavone, Davide Petrini (a cura di), Universal inclusion. Rights and Opportunities for Students with Daisabilities in the Academic Context, Milano, FrancoAngeli, 2018, pp. 157-164

We remember and thank all those involved, beginning with the Rector, Professor Franco Moriconi, who strongly wanted this project; Professor Andrea Capaccioni, the Rector’s Delegate for Library Services; Professor Laura Arcangeli, for services to students with disabilities and specific learning disorders; Dr Elisabetta Brunetti, Director of the Library Services Centre; Ferdinando Valloni, president of AIPD (the Italian Down Syndrome Association); and the Fondazione Cassa di Risparmio di Perugia, which funded the project; the tutors of this second phase of the project, Alessia Regnicoli and Vanessa Benedetti; and the members of the joint committee with technical and operational functions, made up of the present writer together with Dr Moira Sannipoli and Dr Sara Scarabattieri for the University and Dr Valeria Negri and Dr Elena Cucchiari for AIPD. Heartfelt thanks go finally to all the Library staff and to the workers of the CAeB Cooperative. None of this, of course, would have been possible without the contribution of the young people: Pamela Burzigotti, Sara Chiodini, Anna Paola Dell’Aquila, Alessandro Fanelli, Marilisa Grifani, Fabrizia Lopilato, Domenico Riccardi, Giorgio Volpi.

Sabrina Boldrini, who holds a degree in Classics from Perugia and specialised in Classical Archaeology at Padua, has been a librarian at the Humanities Library of the Library Services Centre of the University of Perugia since 2001 and, since 2015, head of the Letters and Education Sciences library division, which comprises, besides the Humanities Library, the Philosophy Library and the Library of Anthropology and Pedagogy.