Io venìa pien d’angoscia a rimirarti. Cataloghi e utenti delle biblioteche pubbliche

The paper presents some considerations about the organisation of catalogues and the functionalities of cataloguing tools with respect to the role of a public library. The first section focuses on the definition of the public library and its characteristics in a relationship with the catalogue. The second section deals with some problems of cataloguing organisation, specifically with the peculiarity of a public library catalogue as a bibliographic tool, the issue of cataloguing data types in relation to the users and the catalogue language, and catalogue use and its integration with the physical collection management.