Special Collections of the Technology Library

Arrived at the library as a gift from the heirs of Armando Maugini in 1985. The collection includes 1,648 inventory units, of which 558 brochures, on agronomic and economic subjects (1900-1970) with special reference to the fascist period and the Italian possessions in Africa (Libya, Somalia, Cyrenaica, etc.). There are also 139 maps of the Italian colonies in Africa, published mainly by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, IGM, De Agostini in the years 1930 to 1950.

Armando Maugini (Messina, 1889 - Florence, 1975) was director of the Italian Institute for Colonial Agriculture from 1924 to 1964 and from 1933 he was lecturing Tropical Agriculture and Tropical Agricultural Economics at the University of Florence.

• The Maugini collection in the University Catalogue
• Armando Maugini in Wikipedia

The collection consists of over 2700 documents, including monographs, abstracts, magazine issues, brochures on financial and agrarian economics, political and social history issues mostly published in the first half of the twentieth century. These constituted the study and work material of Arrigo Serpieri during his years at the Cascine area, where, from 1912, he was director of the National Higher Institute of Forestry, then the Royal Higher Institution of Agricultural and Forestry Studies then Faculty of Agriculture. Serpieri was professor of Economics and Rural Appraisal until 1925, and chair of Agricultural Economics and Policies until 1936 and again from 1947.

2367 works have been already catalogued and the rest of the collection is under completion. Among those there are about 1000 selected pamphlets collected in 43 volumes which are of considerable interest. Many of the documents have dedications, others have accompanying notes in the margins and include the author's handwritten notes, which represent significant testimonials of his career as a scholar and teacher.

• The Serpieri collection in the University Library Catalogue
• Virtual exhibition on Serpieri
• Arrigo Serpieri by Mario Dini, in the proceedings of the confrerence "L'Università degli Studi di Firenze fra istituzioni e cultura nel decennale della scomparsa di Giovanni Spadolini", Firenze, 11-12 October 2004
• Record on Arrigo Serpieri in Archivio Storico del Senato, I Senatori d'Italia (the historical archives of the Senate)

The collection is made up of the library holdings of the Royal Forestry Institute of Vallombrosa, the first national school of forestry founded in 1869 in the Abbey of Vallombrosa. It later became the National Forestry Institute, and it was transferred in 1913 to its present location at the Cascine University seat, becoming in 1924 the Royal Higher Institute of Agriculture and Forestry. From 1936 it was merged into the Royal University of Florence, Faculty of Agriculture and Forestry.

The collection was originally curated by Adolfo Di Berenger, the first director of the Institute, considered the founding father of Italian forestry science.

It contained several works published in the XVI-XVIII centuries, many brochures and technical and scientific treatises of the German-Austrian and French forestry schools of the nineteenth century. In 1913 the library was moved to the Cascine seat following the relocation of the Institute to form the nucleus of the University Library in its current location.

The historical collection includes about 800 antique and rare books dated before 1901 ordered by format. The collection brings together the antique and historical collections of the former departments, integrating them to the antique and historical collection of Architecture, thus having for the first time the entire historical collection of the Library stored and accessible in a single seat, specially designed for the purpose.

It is part of the Roberto Berardi archival collection. It consists of about 700 volumes, many of them relating to the architecture, urbanism and art of North Africa, in which Berardi was a leading expert. The books, which are in the process of being cataloged, are available for consultation in the library and, most importantly, for loan.

It is part of the Alfredo D'Arbela archival collection. It includes about 80 volumes, as well as pamphlets and magazine issues. These are mostly railway engineering texts and technical- scientific handbooks. The collection is not catalogued.

It is part of the Gabriele Morolli Archival Collection and consists of about 4,000 volumes, related to the history of art and architecture. The collection is not catalogued.

The collection, donated by his widow to the Department of Technology of Architecture and Design (TAeD) , is part of the personal library of Egidio Mucci, a semiologist and professor of Tools and Techniques of Visual Communication at the Faculty of Architecture, University of Florence. Mucci was also one of the founders of the Giovanni Klaus Koenig Center and a promoter of the establishment of the Center for Information and Documentation on the Visual Arts (CID / Visual Arts) at the Luigi Pecci Center for Contemporary Art in Prato (where another part of Mucci's library is currently stored), as well as an organizer with Pier Luigi Tazzi of the conference that has gone down in the history of art criticism as "Criticism 0" (Montecatini, 1977). The collection, consisting of several hundred volumes, was transferred to the Architecture Library following the acquisition of the TAeD Book Collection. The collection is being catalogued; catalogued volumes are generally eligible for loan.

The archive was donated by the heirs of the architect and urban planner Giancarlo Paba (Sassari 1946 - Florence 2019). A longtime professor of Urban Technique and Planning at the University of Florence School of Architecture, Paba was also director of the Michelucci Foundation in Fiesole and a founding member of the International Network for Urban Research and Action (Inura). The collection includes about 2,500 volumes related mainly to urban planning, particularly from the Anglo-Saxon area, and contains a number of volumes that are unique in Italian university libraries.   The collection is fully catalogued and searchable through OneSearch discovery.  Volumes are eligible for loan (except rare and valuable ones).

It is part of the Roberto Papini Archival Collection and includes 330 books, 55 journals, 1,500 exhibition catalogs, as well as pamphlets, excerpts and catalogs of antiquarian bookstores. The volumes are available for in-house consultation only. The collection is currently being catalogued.

It is part of the Luigi Vagnetti Archival Collection. It includes about 1,800 monographs and an unknown number of abstracts. The book collection, which is in the process of being catalogued, is available for consultation on the premises and for the most part, eligible for loan.

The library holds about 3,000 geographical and topographical maps, elevations, etc., in various scales and 70 journal titles donated by the Military Geographic Institute [1985]. The material, which includes many duplications, is divided by geographical areas and reports any difference in datings. Journals' descriptions are available on the online catalogue, maps are in the process of being inventoried.

The collection belonged to the Guild of Engineers and Architects of Florence, founded in 1876 with the aim of “contributing to the scientific, practical and artistic progress of all that is related to the various professions of the architect and engineer” (from Article 1 of the Guild's Statute). The collection is located in the atrium of the School, where the most significant items for the history of engineering are displayed in rotation.

The Enrico Fermi collection was donated to the library by Professor Giuseppe Pelosi and consists of publications related in various ways to the figure of Fermi: texts on which Enrico Fermi was educated, works by and about Enrico Fermi, works concerning people connected to the scientist, and/or works written by these same people (such as publications on the disappearance of Ettore Majorana and collection of Majorana's writings). The fifth group of titles was included in the collection because of indirect links to the figure of Fermi, for example, texts on the tradition of physics studies in Florence and Rome, Fermi having taught in both cities. The collection currently consists of about one hundred monographs; moreover, magazines from the 1940s in which articles about Fermi as a public figure are being catalogued. After copyright issues have been evaluated, the rotogravures could be digitized by the library. There are no old books in the collection, only modern materials. The least recent publications date from the late 1800s (1 title) and the 1930s. There are unaltered reprints of texts from the early 1900s that are now hard to find in their original edition. The collection is located in the entrance hall of the School of Engineering, where the most significant pieces are displayed in rotation.

It is a collection consisting of a hundred monographs that belonged to the engineer Alessandro Mazzoni and were donated to the library in 2018. This is the personal library of the engineer, born in Florence in 1931 and aircraft designer for Piaggio, such as the P180 Avanti and the PD-808, as of 2018 the only civil aircraft model developed in Italy to have been granted the type certificate applicable to airliners by the Federal Aviation Administration (FEAA).

Donated in 2013 from professor emeritus Luigi Montefusco and specialized in hydraulic engineering, it consists of about 1200 books and some magazines vintages, published from the nineteenth century until after 2000.

• The Montefusco Collection in the University Catalogue

The collection was donated to the then director of the newly established library of the Faculty of Engineering in 1972 by Officine Galileo. It consists of approximately 1100 monographs, journals and pamphlets in French, Italian, German and English, mainly on the subjects of electrical engineering, physics (mechanics, electromagnetism, optics), precision instruments and equipment, and military and naval engineering. It largely consists of material published in the first half of the 20th century, with a significant presence of material from the 19th century, and was part of the library of the Florentine company founded in 1862 and specialised in the production of optical instruments. The collection also includes a photographic archive of more than 2000 items including photographic plates, films, photographs and slides. The monographs of the collection are placed in the entrance hall of the School, where the most significant pieces for the history of engineering are displayed in rotation.

• Officine Galileo in Wikipedia (in italian)
• The exibition of the Engineering Library "Le Officine Galileo tornano a Rifredi" (in italian)
• The Officine Galileo Collection Catalogue

This collection was established to contain material worthy of protection and consists of: antique books (year of printing less than or equal to 1830); books that, although no longer serving an up-to-date informative function with respect to the subject area to which they belong, testify to a historically interesting stage of knowledge; books of value, i.e. of special interest due to bibliographical peculiarities of various kinds. The collection is stored in cabinets with display cases in the corridor opposite the Historical Archive, where particularly significant specimens are displayed in rotation. The Archive also houses a number of particularly valuable pieces, including a 16th century edition of Vitruvius' De architectura and the large formats, many of which are rare and valuable, which are currently being catalogued.

• Fact sheet on the Engineering’s 16th century book by Maria Felicia Nicoletti (in Italian)
• 16th century book: I dieci libri dell'architettura di M. Vitruuio tradotti et commentati da monsig. Daniel Barbaro ..., Venezia, 1584 in the virtual exhibition Unexplored treasures.