The Library (sbn.it), located in the head office in Rome, in via Alberto Caroncini 19 (the quarter Parioli), is open free to the public from Monday to Friday from 9 a.m. to 13 and on Monday, Wednesday and Friday afternoons from 15.30 to 18.30.

Fino a nuovo avviso l’accesso alla Biblioteca è consentito solo su preventiva prenotazione, nel rispetto della norma sanitaria legata al Coronavirus.

The book loan is excluded, but it is allowed taking advantage of a photocopying service.

The Social Library, rich in over 35,000 volumes and 300 periodicals, represents nowadays the widest Italian collection of specialist historical, political, socio-economic and literary texts about the modern and contemporary Near and Middle East (in particular Islamic).
With the establishment of the IPO and of its Library (1921), was started on paper index cards, the cataloging, organized by author and subject, which is updated until 2006 or so. From this date the cataloging of the acquisitions is done on the Union Catalogue OPAC SBN (National Library System) available on-line at this address.
The Catalogue of Italian and foreign periodicals, that belong to the book heritage of the Istituto is on paper index cards and it can also be consulted on the website of the Italian Union Catalogue of Periodicals ACNP and updated on our site at this address. The Library includes the documentary heritage, consisting of the acquisitions done by IPOCAN since its foundation, and of archive and book funds. The Library of the Istituto belongs to the National Library System OPAC SBN and is federated to the Libraries of Rome - Rome City Council (Department of Cultural Affairs).

Catalogue of periodicals owned by the Library of IPOCAN ( updated until the 15th of February 2023)

Book collections:

Fund Carlo Alfonso and Maria Nallino
Maria Nallino, who was Professor of Arabic Language and Literature at the University of Venice "Ca' Foscari" and Scientific Director of IPO, has bound his personal library with the Istituto per l'Oriente and even that one more valuable of his father (Professor of Arabic Language and Literature at the University of Rome, founder of the Istituto, and editor of the review Oriente Moderno until 1938, the year of his death).
The Fund - currently in course of computer cataloguing according to the system SBN - boasts rare and ancient texts, in print and lithographic, in Arabic, Persian, Turkish and Urdu as well as a wide range of works concerning Arabian and Islamic studies of the eighteenth, nineteenth and twentieth century.

Fund Ettore Rossi
(Mostly cataloged on paper index cards).
Since 1956 the Istituto per l'Oriente has acquired the personal Library of Ettore Rossi, Professor of Turkish language and literature at the University of Rome, who was editor of the review Oriente Moderno from 1939 to 1955, the year of his death.
The Fund, consisting of several volumes, which cannot often be found elsewhere, is rich in texts concerning, in particular, the Ottoman culture and literature and the history of the Republican Turkey.

 

Archive funds
Declared to be of "historical interest particularly important for the study of the political, economic history of Italy and of the Near and Middle East" by the Soprintendenza archivistica for Latium.
Historical Archives of the Institute include key documents for the knowledge of the Italian cultural policy in particular until the forties.
Archives Carlo Alfonso and Maria Nallino which consist of letters, documents, photographs ... See the publication of the Istituto: Anna Baldinetti (ed.) Carte private di Carlo Alfonso e Maria Nallino, Inventari, Roma, 1995, pp, XIII +97.
Archives Angelo Sammarco (1883-1948), former member of the Istituto, include paper documents that are of particular interest for the history of the relations between Egypt, Italy and Europe since 1798 and in particular of all that regards the opening of the Suez Canal (1859-1869).

 

In the end, the IPOCAN boasts the Library Fund on Indonesia, donated by Prof. Luigi Santa Maria (former Professor of Indonesian Language and Literature at the Istituto Universitario Orientale of Naples and President of the Istituto), and that one of Prof. Pier Giovanni Donini, former Professor at the same university, as well as member of the staff of Oriente Moderno and of the Consiglio d'Amministrazione of IPOCAN and Consiglio Scientifico (Scientific Council) of Oriente Moderno.

Given the deterioration of the material you can reserve the consultation, which may take place only in the presence of a person in charge/clerk.