History

A swan's song can also die out like this, without any final high notes: it can fall silent just as the voice of one who has said it all and has nothing more to add is silent after the long story. And because of this (but also because there remain, after him, those who will continue his life) he can die in peace."

F.M. Pacces ‘Aziendaria: studies and battles’, Turin, 1933
 

The history of the Library is closely linked to the thought and work of two very different figures who shared the same farsightedness, iron will and tireless tenacity in pursuing their goals, Miss Marcella Novo and Prof. Federico Maria Pacces.

Marcella Carolina Novo, a relatively little-known figure, but a leading figure in Turin's industrial environment for more than thirty years, was the first woman in Italy to hold the position of CEO of a large international company.
 

Having joined Ambrosetti in 1930, after a brief experience at Fiat, Miss Novo was already an executive when the Swiss forwarding agent Giovanni Züst took over the company. Appointed managing director in 1958, a time when equal opportunities were certainly not a priority in the world of work, she held the position for more than thirty years with sensitivity, competence and dedication.
 

His munificence made possible the annual awarding of a large number of scholarships to particularly deserving SAA students.
 

The naming of the library, as a place of study and cultural growth, is intended to pay tribute to his far-sightedness in the development of new recruits for Piedmontese entrepreneurship.

Federico Maria Pacces, an intellectual and academic, was the founder in 1946, together with other intellectuals, of Sole 24 Ore and other important magazines on the Italian business scene. He was also the promoter of important scientific and research institutions for the study of business economics (e.g. the current Ceris - CNR), as well as of SAA itself, the first Italian business school to be fully integrated into the university system.
 

Gifted with fervid imagination and remarkable farsightedness, Pacces left an indelible mark on management education at university level by realising, at least a decade ahead of others, the importance of academic training of executives for the development of the Italian economy and the indispensable role of dialogue between industry and universities.
 

With this in mind, in 1957 he founded the then School of Industrial Administration (SAI), which became the School of Business Administration in 1974.
 

In his lecture for the inauguration of SAI's ninth academic year, Pacces, with his imaginative prose, recites:
 

’... the market is only a battlefield and the battles are led by men. The task of preparing men, which until yesterday was carried out separately by the university, in its doctrine, albeit always tougher, and by industry, in its necessarily contingent and nagging problems, can and must be carried out with far greater efficiency, in a community of intent, by the association of both these forces."
 

It was Pacces himself who wanted, within the structure he founded, a modern library that would support the activities of the teaching staff working there and guarantee the students adequate documentation for their training needs. To this end, he acquired the first overseas collections of business literature and the most important business texts on the market at the time. These, in addition to the Ipsoa collection integrated into the library's holdings by direct intervention of Pacces, formed the basis on which the library began its activities, which have now continued uninterrupted for more than 40 years.