Guerriera Guerrieri

The Lady of the Books, Guerriera Guerrieri. In her name and surname she traces the event that marked the professional story of the "Lady of Books". In signing the link with her greatest merit: having safeguarded the bibliographic heritage threatened by war (Second World War ed.), which earned her, in 1968, the gold medal for merit in culture and from 8 March 2023 the naming of the monumental Reading Room of the National Library of Naples.
A name, a destiny, for a woman who with courage, tenacity and foresight faced the danger of bombs and faced first the German occupiers, former allies in retreat, then the American forces and also some Neapolitan criminals looking for something they could resell.
Born in Tuscany, in Cortona, in 1902, he moved to Naples where he studied at the State Archives where he graduated in Paleography and archival doctrine and then continued at the University of Naples Federico II, obtaining a degree in Classics in 1926. Hired at the National Library of Naples “Vittorio Emanuele III”, she became its director from the beginning of the years ‘40 to 1967 and in the dark years of the war, she took care of the transport and safety of book materials in the various shelters located throughout the Campania region such as the Montevergine Monastery and the Loreto Abbey Palace. The personal and historical events of those years are reconstructed in detail in the War Diary 1943-1945, an analytical account of those terrible moments, which was published only in 1980, the year of his death. Furthermore, from 1952 to 1972 he taught Library Science at the specialization school for librarians and archivists of Federico II and, later, in the Faculty of Education of the University of Salerno. After the war he promoted the establishment of the AIB (Italian Library Association) of which he held the presidency continuously from 1948 to 1976.
As Maria Iannotti, director of the National Library, stated on the occasion of the naming of the Reading Room, Guerrieri was: “ [...] An example of a combative, tenacious and determined woman, but also of a passionate scholar and librarian. His commitment and dedication in carrying out his mission as a librarian until the last days of his life remind us that to carry out our work competently, we cannot ignore civil commitment, which means promoting the right to reading, knowledge and information as everyone's right."