The latest book to arrive, delivered as a package, was written by a descendant of the first Italian fishermen who migrated to Western Australia. It’s a story detailing a family history that dates back to 1885. It joins others in a rising pile of books awaiting attention from the librarian.

The room is unlike any other library I’ve been to. No study tables, no computers. Yet the newly opened library has almost 2500 items, from children’s picture books to historical classics, even some CDs and board games.

These 2500 items have all been catalogued by one person, Silvia Zanello, a volunteer librarian. A job the Dante Alighieri Society of WA’s chairperson, Alessandro Vero, says is extremely difficult.

DASWA is a non-for profit organisation that aims to teach students, no matter their background or age, the Italian language and culture.

Asked what was challenging about establishing the library, Vero says, “it takes long time to catalogise the books.”

Zanello, over the span of two years, catalogued the initial 500 books donated by the society’s headquarters in Rome, alongside another 1500 donated by the WA community, with new donations coming in every week.

The Dante Alighieri’s school principal, Giulia Ferraro, agrees Zanello has been central to the creation of the library. “We were looking for someone with not only professional expertise, but also cultural sensitivity, passion and a willingness to build something from the ground up. Silvia brought all of these qualities,” she says.

Zanello explains she was about to retire from her job as a librarian when she saw Dante Alighieri Society advertising a volunteer position for cataloguing the upcoming library. Having studied history, worked as a librarian and been born in an Italian family, she decided it was a role she could fulfill.

“This brings together both my love of library work, cataloguing, and the Italian language and culture,” Zanello says. And though Vero described her as being enthusiastic, the task still required immense effort. With no library management system, Zanello had to personally sort out the donations one by one.  

“In my previous jobs as a librarian, there was always access to databases and library management systems that you could work with and support technical help and other resources. This was very much flying in the dark and trying to work out what to do,” she says. No budget was available for a library management system, so Zanello sourced and created the library system the Dante Alighieri Society uses.

To ensure a pristine cataloguing system, Zanello expanded her research to libraries in Italy, learning multiple new library systems to correctly label and describe each and every book. Not only did she have to search library databases in a completely different language, she had to learn and familiarise herself with all types of authors, from modern day children’s writers to historical figures, like Dante Alighieri.

Though it was an intense task, the enthusiasm Vero saw in her got her through. Following our interview, Zanello spent 15 minutes explaining how she navigated the process of finding books, their details and appropriate cataloguing systems.

Zanello admits, “my passion is books, reading, and sharing knowledge and information. Libraries are all about buying books for everyone, they don’t belong to just one person.”

Her love for books started at a young age. She recounted how as a child she would play with her parents’ books, “I used to sort them out and tidy them up and create my own little library I suppose.”

She was quite ill with rheumatic fever as a child and spent a lot of time in hospital. Her only passtime was reading. She says she escaped into a world of storybooks, finding comfort and friendship in literary characters:

“You don’t have much to do, so you read and you read and you fall in love with books and authors and stories.”

Zanello then spent her life surrounded by books, working in the Johannesburg Public Library, the City of Sydney Public Library, an academic library at Curtin University and various local libraries in Perth.

She says that, despite all her different librarian endeavours, this job at Dante Alighieri Society was by far the most difficult, having to create a whole virtual library from scratch and following a foreign country’s cataloguing system.

Nonetheless, it’s a system she has perfected, and she is now teaching the rest of the DASWA staff how to use it. She continues to evaluate and catalogue donations everyday, creating a collection that anybody in Perth can access.

With Western Australia having more that 25,000 residents who speak Italian at home, Ferraro says this library is an important way to preserve the country’s language culture, and community.

“With the size of the collection and the wide range of genres available, we provide unique resources, not only to Italians but also for anyone who is passionate about or curious about Italian language and culture.”

The new library was just another step towards DASWA’s aim to build the Perth Italian community. A step not possible without Zanello and the time she dedicated to curating the books. Now around 250 people have a membership at the library, achieving Dante Alighieri’s wider goal of sharing the wonders the Italian culture has to offer.

As the membership grows and the library becomes a bigger harbour for Italian literature, Zanello says it is a unique opportunity for people in Perth to experience Italy without having to travel there.