Carla Spigarelli from the National Historical Library of Agriculture - Italian Ministry of Agriculture, food and forestry policies, took the time to discuss her organization's role as an AGROVOC editorial partner and what it means for her and her organization to be part of the AGROVOC network. 

How are you engaging with AGROVOC?          

The Italian Ministry of Agriculture has been collaborating with AGROVOC since the very beginning, in the 1980's. Throughout this time, many AGROVOC terms have been translated from Latin and English to Italian. The goal is improving the indexing and retrieval of agricultural information and providing better resource discovery services by leveraging the rich linkages among concepts, synonyms, and term translations in AGROVOC.​

I continued my organization's role as an AGROVOC editor from my predecessor Massimo Ragucci in november 2019.

Why is AGROVOC useful to your institution? 

We are a sector library and our Ministry is strictly connected to agriculture; there are agronomists, zoo technicians, food and fishery experts working in different offices and directions, so we are the first - as an administration - who benefit from this kind of information service. Last but not least, our numerous visitors also benefit.

If you met a new AGROVOC editor, what is the best advice you would give them?   ​

I would suggest to be curious, because such a work takes you deep in very different fields and environments, and I would also suggest to share questions and knowledge. My aim is actually to involve in this project of translation and implementation of the thesaurus other colleagues from the Ministry as well as researchers from CREA - Council for Agricultural Research and Agricultural Economy Analysis or scholars frequenting our library. 

Pictured (left to right): Massimo Ragucci and Carla Spigarelli, National Historical Library of Agriculture (Italy)

Photo credit: Carla Spigarelli

More about the National Historical Library of Agriculture - Italian Ministry of Agriculture, food and forestry policies

The National Historical Library of Agriculture was born in 1860, within the Ministry of Agriculture and Trade far before the unification of Italy, in order to allow ministerial officers the access to most relevant texts and field studies.

Particular consideration was given to the collection of works and publications which came from the scientific, technical and legal areas linked with the agricultural world. The Library was one of the first ministerial libraries to open to the public in 1871, giving access to the rich bibliographic collection.

The subject catalogue includes the following principal categories: 

- encyclopedia and polygraphics

- philosophical and didactics sciences

- economic and social sciences

- history and geography

- literature

- agricultural sciences and Industries

The library also owns a precious historical collection of photos, maps and geographical charts. At the present time, the library is part of the National Library System (SBN) and is connected to the Public State Libraries of Rome.