The Library of the Department of Chemistry was born in 1871 with the arrival in Rome of Stanislao Cannizzaro, who was in charge of teaching courses in inorganic and organic chemistry at the Sapienza University, directing the Practical School and organizing a well-equipped chemical institute (the Chemical Institute of Via Panisperna).
For about sixty years, the library was located in the old convent of S. Lorenzo in Panisperna (at number 89 Via Panisperna), until the academic year 1939-1940, when the institute and the library were moved to the new site of the Città Universitaria. The Chemical Institute and the Library were thus housed in the building designed by Pietro Aschieri, considered one of the largest and most important in Marcello Piacentini's Città Universitaria.
The assets of the Library of the Chemical Institute grew with the unification of the specialized libraries of the Institutes of Analytical Chemistry, Physical Chemistry, Organic Chemistry, and Inorganic and General Chemistry, assuming its specific centrality in 1968.
With the establishment of the General Chemistry Service and later of the Department of Chemistry, the services of the Library were permanently centralized in the present Cannizzaro and Caglioti buildings of the Department, although they remained physically in different locations.
The current holdings of the Library, named after Prof. Gabriello Illuminati since 1989, are specialized in the natural sciences and include various materials on the different disciplines related to chemistry. The library also holds ancient and valuable publications, both periodicals and monographs.
The Library today
In Aschieri's design, the main study room, together with the archive of the Chemical Abstracts* collection, was located on the second floor of the S. Cannizzaro CU014 building. In the 1990s, to make room for the new industrial chemistry laboratories, the original library was closed and the services were temporarily moved to the study rooms of the NEC (New Chemistry Building), on the third floor of the V. Caglioti CU032 building. Today this is the permanent location of the library.
In 2023, the fusion agreement between the Libraries of the Departments of Chemistry and Biochemistry "Rossi Fanelli" was approved; their fusion gave birth to the Interdepartmental Library of Chemistry and Biochemistry (BiCB) "Gabriello Illuminati", which has its main location on the third floor of the Vincenzo Caglioti Building (CU032) of the Department of Chemistry.
* Chemical Abstracts is the most important indexed bibliographic directory obtained by reviewing approximately 8,000 journals, technical reports, theses, conference proceedings, and monographs in English and in one of the 50 most widely spoken languages on the planet. It also includes patents registered in 27 countries and two international organizations. They were published in print form from 1907 until January 1, 2010, when the Chemical Abstract Service (CAS) converted the publications to electronic format through the STN and then SciFinder systems.