Opening Hours and Contacts
Monday – Friday: 8:00 am -7:00 pm
Saturday: 8:30 am -1:30 pm
Email [email protected]
Telephone 0666543882
The Pius XII Library was founded at the same time as the Pontifical Athenaeum Regina Apostolorum. The Library holdings previously belonged to the Centre for Higher Studies (Centro Studi Superiori) of the Legionaries of Christ.
In 1993, the Library purchased the personal library of the well-known Mexican historian Ernesto de la Torre Villar: roughly 3000 books on the history of Mexico and Latin America. In 2000, upon the creation of the Faculty of Bioethics, the first such school in the world, the Library began collecting a large number of publications on the subject.
The Library collections predominantly consist of documents regarding the disciplines taught in the various Faculties and Institutes of the Athenaeum.
The Library holds over 200,000 publications, including monographs, brochures, and degree theses or dissertations, and receives about 1000 periodicals under subscription or exchange arrangements with other libraries.
Half of the collection is kept on open shelves (open stacks), while the other half is kept in the Library repository (closed stacks).
The Library, which has joined in the National Library Service (Servizio Bibliotecario Nazionale – SBN) via Polo SBN degli Istituti Culturali di Roma in 2007, is also a participant in ACNP, the Italian catalogue of periodicals.
The Library is involved in data and resource sharing initiatives, such as ESSPER.
Users have access to 800 scientific journals and to a collection of about 500 multimedia documents (floppy disks and CD-ROMs). Prominent among the latter are bibliographic databases for philosophical and theological research, and the prestigious collection of Clasicos Tavera, published by Fundacion Historica Tavera, a Spanish institute that has embarked on an impressive project of digitisation of the classics of Spanish and Hispano-American literature in the past two decades.
The Library has an on-line searchable catalogue and a reading room equipped with three PCs connected to Polo degli Istituti Culturali di Roma and Servizio Bibliotecario Nazionale. An adjoining room is fitted with 30 PCs that are available for students. The students of the Athenaeum have free access to the reading room. External students may have access to the reading room on presenting a valid identity document.
The Library provides both InterLibrary Loan (ILL) and Document Delivery (DD) services. To find out how to use these services and to obtain additional information about the delivery of photocopies/scanned copies, write to [email protected] or call +39-06-66543882.
Moreover, the Library is linked to the data bank of Index Religiosus, which holds publications in various European languages (Dutch, English, French, German, Italian, Spanish, etc.) and is the result of a project of cooperation between the Catholic University of Leuven and KU Leuven, both internationally recognised for their excellence in theology and religious studies.
The Library also provides users with access to the on-line version of Ephemerides Theologicae Lovanienses, a leading theological journal.
