Extract from number 1 of January 1887 of the magazine “La Cooperazione Italiana” “Finally Cooperation has also in Italy a newspaper that will diffuse its various interests, that will gather the capacities spread and that will become the connection between the associations to communicate, to help one another with advices and comfort ; that lastly will reinforce uncertain people, enlighten the doubtful ones, will help creating between workers a new fervor for goodness, diffusing everywhere the principles of reciprocal love.
This magazine intends to be an unrestricted field open to all honest ideas and practices having the aim of an economic improval of the working class, that can be obtained only through education and through the union of little strengths giving to the unprovided ones, that does not use violence but spreads by moving by argument and by good example, this is for us the cooperation, that we believe will be destined to transform the relationships between producers and consumers, workers and employers, renewing the social order peacefully and on the basis of justice”.
With these words the magazine “La Cooperazione Italiana” was born.
After more than 100 years from its first issue, we can state that the expectations of nineteenth-century cooperators have been realized. Today the cooperation is a great economical and social strength, that known how to grow and evolve without giving up the values that marked the birth of this periodical.
The magazine “La Cooperazione Italiana” was founded in Milan in 1887, as an instrument of information for cooperatives associated to the Federation of Italian Cooperative Companies, in a first period it was essentially dedicated to the chronicle of Italian and foreign cooperation , as years went by it assumed more evident editorial ambitions. Up to 1919 the magazine represented unitarily the different cultural courses of the Italian cooperation. In November 1925 the magazine, following the dissolution of the Lega delle Cooperative decreeted by the Prefect of Milan, stopped its publication that was recovered regularly only in 1945 with the reconstitution of the Lega delle Cooperative.
La Cooperazione Italiana is a precious source to study the cooperation, for researchers, for cooperators, for teachers, for admirers, as well as for people keen to know the history of the cooperative reality. The articles are often accompanied by illustrations : photographies, designs and sketches, and also by many advertisings of the time.
From these considerations, confirmed by the almost unique completeness in national panorama of the magazine collection owned by the Centre, we started the project of constituting a data base of the magazine.
The data base, realized by the Center, in cooperation with IBACN of the Emilia-Romagna Region, is a digital version of the magazine Cooperazione Italiana from 1887 to 1980 including so more than seventy years of chronicle, news, realizations, events on the Italian cooperative movement.
This digitalization work allows an easy access to the magazine, without difficulties of reading for people, who can freely navigate in the articles selected, with the possibility of printing them, favoring in this way the preservation of the original pages of the magazine.
The digitalization of the magazine was made keeping in consideration the indications of the Biblioteca Digitale Italiana (Italian Digital Library), to allow possible politics of integration and valorization of Italian electronic resources.