Milan - 17 Oct 2016 15:41 UTC

HEADQUARTERS AND BOLLATE – AFTER  SETTIMO TORINESE – ENRICHED WITH A DONATION OF 7,000 BOOKS AVAILABLE TO ITS EMPLOYEES

THANKS TO HELP FROM THE ITALIAN SCHOOL FUND THE COMPANY, WITH THE INVOLVEMENT OF EMPLOYEES, WILL SUPPORT THE STOCKS OF SCHOOL LIBRARIES

THE INITIATIVES ARE PART OF THE #IOLEGGOPERCHÉ CAMPAIGN

Not one, but three company libraries – one for each of the company’s locations in Italy – from today enter into the world of Pirelli. Forever attentive to the improvement of employees’ quality of life and working environment, the company today inaugurated a library at its headquarters in Milan’s Bicocca area and one at its plant in Bollate, which will flank the one already opened with success inside Pirelli’s industrial hub in Settimo Torinese.

The inauguration of the Pirelli library is part of #ioleggoperché 2016, the campaign promoting reading organized by the Associazione Italiana Editori (AIE) in which Pirelli is the main partner and this year is focusing on the development of activities to promote and create company and school libraries. At the “ribbon cutting”, which took place today at Pirelli’s headquarters, the Executive Vice Chairman and CEO of Pirelli, Marco Tronchetti Provera and the City of Milan’s Councillor for Culture, Filippo del Corno, the Delegated Director and Director of the Fondazione Pirelli, Antonio Calabrò, and Chairman of the AIE Federico Motta. The event saw the special participation of Lella Costa, in her role of Honorary Member of the Fondo Scuola Italia, the non-profit association which, acting as a bridge to companies, has the goal of gathering resources and materials to put at the disposal of Italian schools.

Spreading culture by bringing books into factories and the work place has always seen Pirelli on the front lines. Important places of aggregation, culture and innovation, company libraries are born to encourage employees to read, get informed, gather ideas and compare notes. Factories and work places in general are special places where even culture is produced. Science fiction books, crime novels, best sellers, non-fiction books and children’s books represent the initial stock of around 3,500 volumes at Headquarters in Milan and plant at Bollate: a number which, when complete, will exceed 7,000 units. Many titles and different genres that go beyond the traditional idea of a company library destined to contain only volumes connected with the company’s business.

It was Pirelli’s own employees, through the community of dedicated readers at the Milan headquarters and the active involvement of those of Bollate, that chose the first 1,000 titles considered “must-haves” on the shelves of the new library. To these were added volumes donated by the company RSU, those acquired by the company and books chosen by the Fondazione Pirelli, custodian of the Pirelli archive and that of its entrepreneurial culture.

The libraries at Pirelli’s Headquarters and at Bollate flank the one at the Settimo Torinese Industrial hub, which recently linked with the Piedmonte communal library. This allows employees to count on 110,000 volumes, 220 magazines, 14 dailies, 4,500 films and documentaries in Dvd form, 4,000 music Cds and 400 audio-books. A number which has grown exponentially thanks to the ample stocks of the “Sbam” or the “library system of the Turin metropolitan area” (11 million books, traceable and bookable on the basis of the ErasmoNet catalogue) and of which Pirelli’s library has become a part becoming the first private library to be included in a public library system.

Pirelli and the libraries: a story 90 years long

The opening of the new libraries is part of a tradition, which saw Pirelli open its first company library almost 90 years ago. It was in 1928, in fact, that the first library for employees enrolled in the “Dopolavoro Aziende Pirelli” opened and already counted close to 800 titles. With formal regulations for the loan and return of books, the library was closed for a period during the war, only to reopen in 1945 with around 3,000 volumes chosen by the workers from catalogues provided by the company. In the following year the library continued to grow until it reached 10,000 volumes in 1956, thanks also to the creation of a reading room for newspapers and magazines and for the consultation of books directly from the shelves. Library loans reached at the time 50,000, a tangible sign of the interest of employees in reading. For its researchers and engineers Pirelli had also created a Technical-Scientific library composed of around 16,000 volumes on the rubber and cables technology from the 1800s to modern times. This collection has been available since 2010 to the public, students and researchers at the Fondazione Pirelli.

#ioleggoperché 2016: Pirelli in support of school libraries

The inauguration of the Pirellis company library is just one of the concrete responses to the campaign promoting books and reading #ioleggoperché (www.ioleggoperche.it) which this year has the goal – thanks to the collaboration with ALI (Associazione Librai Italiani–Confcommercio), AIB (Associazione Italiana Biblioteche) and Confindustria Gruppo tecnico Cultura e Sviluppo and under the auspices of CEPELL – to spread the passion for reading, inviting people to become “messengers” for the initiative and to donate books to participating schools.

For this reason Pirelli, in collaboration with the Fondo Scuola Italia and also in this case with the contribution of employees, is committed to contributing to the increase of the stock of school libraries. For each book bought by an employee in one of the participating bookstores and donated to schools associated with #IoLeggoMaPerchè, Pirelli doubles committing to buy as many books as those bought by employees. The volumes will be donated to the schools thanks to the Fondo Scuola Italia, a non-profit association dedicated to reinforcing the link between schools and companies.

The support of this initiative is proof of Pirelli’s constant commitment to invest in the young and education. An activity which each year sees the company distribute scholarships to the most deserving children of employees, finance doctorates in research at the Milano Bicocca University and organize educational activities for all school age children through courses carried out by the Fondazione Pirelli and by the Fondazione Pirelli HangarBicocca.

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