During the XXIV edition of Confindustria’s Business Culture Week, the Bracco Group organized an afternoon of reflection on the value of reading and in particular of libraries as places in which to train critical spirit and citizenship. On the occasion of the conference, entitled “The resourcefulness of reading”, which was held at the “Anita & Fulvio Bracco” Auditorium in via Folli 50, the new headquarters of the company library was also inaugurated.
The event was attended by – in addition to Diana Bracco, President and CEO of the Bracco Group and Fulvio Renoldi Bracco, Vice President and CEO of Bracco Imaging – Antonio Calabrò, President of the Corporate Culture Group of Confindustria and President of Museimpresa, Chiara Faggiolani, Professor of Library Science at the Department of Modern Letters and Cultures of the University of Rome La Sapienza, Giacomo Papi, Writer and Journalist, Content Director of the Mondadori Foundation and Tommaso Sacchi, Councilor for Culture of the Municipality of Milan.
“Culture is the prime mover of every human endeavor, and books in particular are effective antibodies against the thinning of thought,” stated Diana Bracco. “Companies too, alongside schools, universities, institutions and families, can and must do a lot. For example, with training programs and by opening company libraries – which are symbolic places, true centers of knowledge and continuous learning, capable of generating new ideas. We at Bracco have always believed in this. First of all with the new headquarters of the Library which we are inaugurating today, and then with the restoration and cataloging of the 3000 volumes of the Library that belonged to Senator Francesco Salata, my grandmother’s brother Giovanna, fervent patriot and distinguished historian. In a few months this book heritage will be available to the public by appointment at our headquarters in via Cino del Duca”.
Bracco is one of the few Italian companies to boast a company library. Born in 2021, and heir to a first library created in the 1960s with the CRAL of the time, the “Diana Bracco” Library promotes and facilitates reading for employees and collaborators, providing a space, physical and also virtual, for reflection, leisure and sociality within the company.
To expand the offer, an agreement is active with the Municipality of Milan, which allows access to the entire heritage of the 24 libraries of the Milan Library System and, in June this year, the Bracco Reading Group was launched, led by Alessandro Ghidini of the AEdicola Association of Lambrate, which is enjoying good success among employees.
After an important restyling project, the Library now has a new headquarters, larger and more beautiful, demonstrating how much the Bracco Group truly believes in the “enterprise of reading”: “In recent years the Library has grown together with us: more than 250 members among Bracco colleagues and collaborators, over 1,100 loans in the current year, new technologies and services that make it accessible and modern”, underlined Fulvio Renoldi Bracco. “But the real value lies not in the numbers, but in the relationships that are created here, in the ideas that arise from a conversation in front of a shelf, in the curiosity that is sparked by leafing through a book suggested by a colleague. Having a library in the company means much more than guarding a collection of books. In a world that runs fast, the library offers us the time and place to stop, listen, discuss and imagine new possibilities together”.