Type of materials and related activities

Periodicals: The Library has an important collection of journals. Currently in catalogue there are more 'than 20,000 periodical titles, of which more than 5000 active. The increase is primarily due to the purchasing policy (46%), the legal deposit (34%), to the gift  exchange (18%), periodicals from Publications Office of the European Union through the CDE (2%) .
In order to rationalize the process of acquisition of journals, databases and library materials for the benefit of all the CNR staff, it was decided to stipulate centralized agreements with the major international publishers. There are available to the scientific community over 32,000 electronic resources.

The collection of periodicals contains:

• journals on paper (over 16,000 titles between Italian and foreign publications, current and closed and publications of the European Union);
• 200 journal titles on CD / DVD;
• journals online (over 4,000 titles between Italian and foreign publications, current and closed and EU publications).

The entries regarding the subject, covered by these titles, especially enclose scientific subjects, even if they are represented in the catalogue socio-humanistic disciplines. In the heritage of periodicals are included 611 periodicals from the collection of the "Pallottino" Library.

Monographs: The monographic heritage in this catalogue, currently consisting of over 250,000 books and 48,000 e-books is fully searchable. It belongs to the Central Library also the collection of the "Pallottino" Library (6148 monographs and about 9000 extracts).

Its heritage consists of:

Historical archive: books received in the library from 1927 to late 80s approximately; was completed the transfer of over 100,000 boards of the whole paper catalogue, which is still available to users at the entrance corridor to the library;

Current monographs archive: they are obtained through Legal Deposit, the purchase of foreign publications, exchange, donations from organizations and individuals and CNR publications; the acquisition of E-books is through centralized contracts with the major international publishers. The monographic heritage  of the current archive (from the late '80s), classified by Dewey, includes disciplines of technical/scientific subject, but also contain items of legal, linguistic and socio/humanity matters.

Publications of the European Union: official documents (about 5000 units) produced by the Office for Official Publications of the European Union and present in the European Documentation Centre registered in the online catalogue of the Central Library.

Grey Literature: The database is part of the European network OpenGrey (System for Information on Grey Literature in Europe) edited by the INIST-CNRS, an open-archive containing the references related to "gray literature" produced in Europe and whose Library 'G. Marconi 'is the National Reference Centre for the Italian Grey Literature. To the implementation of the repertoire of the Italian gray literature also collaborates certain structures and the related referents of the CNR scientific network.

Particular types of materials and other specialized activities are assigned to the offices of SOLAR (Open-access Scientific Literature Archive and Repository) and the National ISSN Centre (International Standard Serial Number).

CNR SOLAR is a database of scientific publications aimed at the realization of an archive of Italian products of science and research carried out in line with the new policy of dissemination of knowledge taken as part of international Open Access initiatives. In addition to the contribution of the Italian scientific community, the archive increases, currently for the most part, through the Legal Deposit of publications in digital format (Law April 15, 2004, n. 106; DPR May 3, 2006, n.252, Chapter VII Deposit of documents disseminated through computer network, art. 37 and later; DPCM October 7, 1987, n. 475 and Law October 7, 2013, n. 112, art. 4, paragraph 3).

The repository is addressed to the entire scientific community of the country hosting both the production of the Organization  that coming from external realities. Upon a declaration of originality and authenticity of the works - only valid for products not yet published - you can deposit legally a diverse range of documents in digital format with the release of certification. The deposit can be made through selfarchiving or by contacting the staff in charge after formal agreement.

Currently are deposited around 8000 products belonging to various bibliographic/editorials typologies, such as:

• articles in journals, pre-print, post-print (83%)
• technical reports, project reports and working papers (7%)
• books and book chapters (7%)
• conference, workshop, lecture, poster (2%)
• academic thesis, patents, educational materials, maps, etc. (1%).

From the analysis of the topics, encoded by Decimal Dewey Classification, it appears a greater presence of scientific disciplines related to matters such as the physical sciences, engineering, medicine than the socio-humanistic disciplines, such as economics, law, literature and fine arts.

The National ISSN Centre: The National ISSN Centre  is the node of the International ISSN Network  and has the institutional task to assign the ISSN Identification code (ISO 3297 standard: 2007; UNI ISO: 3297: 2010) to serial publications published in Italy, implementing the database managed by the International Network with a summary description of the identified publications. The Centre does not preserve the physical copies of the  journals censured: however preserves the administrative and editorial documentation  suitable to testify the procedures for application and release of the codes received over the years by publishers, agencies, associations, cultural organizations, libraries etc. The documentation arrived until 2009 is preserved on paper; by 2010 only in electronic format, because the assignment requests and all related messaging are exclusively treated electronically by the Centre.