The Vailati Collection is divided into two main sections, the library and the archive. Acquired in 1959, it has been fully arranged, described and catalogued between 1996 and 1997.
The archive material is subdivided in three series: correspondence, manuscripts and material for printing.
The correspondence comprises the letters, parts of postcards whose addresses cannot be identified, addresses, lists of names compiled by Vailati, invitations to meetings, banquets, openings, advertising, institute communications, invoices, receipts.
The manuscripts comprise Vailati’s exercise books; the so called “notes”: small agendas used by Vailati from 1880 containing quotations, addresses, expense accounts, sent and received letters, etc.; the didactic material, inside which there are lecturing notes, homeworks, material for students and exercises to be solved. This series also contains all the documents concerning the royal Commission for the reform of the secondary school, in which Vailati took part in 1905.
The third series consists of the material for printing section and it contains notes and manuscripts in view of publication which document the evolutionary phases of Vailati’s works: preparatory notes, manuscript versions of the text, typescripts and proof sheets.
Vailati’s library features around 2600 titles, ancient and modern: books and journal articles on which Vailati worked daily. The texts have been organized, depending on the format, in ten sets labelled with alphabet letters from A to J. All the books and the journal articles, over 1.200 bounded in 30 volumes and identified by the wording “GV. ML”, have been electronically catalogued into the National Library System and can be found through the Opac.
