The school memories of a teacher in the period of transition from dictatorship to democracy. The work library of teacher Maria Riccini

In recent years, the historical-educational research has greatly expanded the spectrum of sources used to reconstruct the history of school, combining traditional research tools (normative sources, schoolbooks, private memoirs, diaries, autobiographies) to other more innovative (exercise books, scoreboards, geographical maps, school furniture, etc.) in order to understand the entire scholastic experience. The present article focuses on this close dialogue between sources of different types, in order to reflect on the heuristic potential of teachers' work libraries. We refer to a typology of documentary and book collections that is unique and invaluable in its kind, as it contains heterogeneous material, which – in the most fortunate cases – ranges from autobiographical sources to the school textbooks adopted by the teacher, up to the exercise books and various memories of the students. Analysed in their entirety, these libraries offer a unique insight into the daily life of educational practices in a school context. The authors intend to offer an example on this particular research perspective, focusing on a representative case: the Maria Riccini Fund (1892-1975) preserved at Macerata University.