Reggio Emilia, July 28, 2026 – The “book angels” are at work, that is a group of about seventy volunteers from Reggio of the Civil Protection who, after attending special training courses, have created a team specialized in the recovery of historical and cultural heritage. “The Reggio group is the first in the region, born in 2012, to specialize in this particular field, and has already intervened outside the province in case of disasters, such as the 2012 earthquake that struck Emilia and the flood in Romagna in 2023,” explained Alessandro Sandrolini, president of the Provincial Coordination of Civil Protection.
These volunteers operate among the shelves of the Panizzi library, armed with gloves, masks, brushes, hydro-alcoholic sanitizing solutions, absorbent sheets, and a special machine, provided to the library, called “depulvera,” which mechanically dusts the books. Their activity is organized in teams of four people, who work two days a week in four-hour shifts to recover the 80,000 volumes that fill the eight kilometers of the undergrounds of the historic building on via Farini.
Innovative conservation techniques to preserve books
Yesterday we had the opportunity to see them at work on some ancient books and discover the various conservation techniques aimed at preserving their integrity, fighting mold, humidity, dust, and damage caused by time.
“The first volumes to be the subject of their work are those that were hit by the storm on July 15 last, which flooded part of our undergrounds, about fifty in total, including twentieth-century volumes such as bibliographic repertoires and manuscript catalogs, which are working tools for scholars, bibliologists, and codicologists. After completing this activity, they will move on to cleaning old and more recent newspapers, bound in large format volumes,” explained the director of the library Alberto Ferraboschi.
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Mietto: “We must enhance our heritage”
The city councilor for Culture Marco Mietto commented: “In our city, we have a heritage of skills and passion that we must enhance and know how to mobilize in the best way. For this reason, we signed an agreement, in agreement with the Archival and Bibliographic Superintendency of Emilia-Romagna, with the Civil Protection that offers us the great opportunity to avail ourselves of their help even in non-emergency situations, to protect and preserve the conservation of our historical memory.
I thank all those who participate in this important project. Often there is rhetoric about books, such as when recalling their destruction in bonfires by the Nazis; in this way, we defend books concretely, without rhetoric, every day.” Nicola Raimondi, head of the manuscripts and ancient books section of the library, finally added: “The Panizzi has a cultural heritage that few other realities can boast, it has an international value, made up of ancient and valuable documents. Just think of the about 80,000 volumes of the Popular Library, founded in 1910 by Camillo Prampolini. The beautiful thing about this initiative, which will continue for several months, is that the conservation library thus becomes an entity open to the city and not closed, reserved only for insiders.” The Reggio library system counts 350,000 loans every year, in addition to half a million accesses.
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