The BiGLI, “General Bibliography of Italian Language and Literature” is an annual magazine created and implemented by the Centro Pio Rajna, published in print by the Salerno Editrice publishing, between 1994 (vol.1, bibliographic year 1991) and the 2015 (vol. XXI-XXII, bibliographic year 2011-2012) —, that lists and records, with high scientific level criteria, everything that is published in the world, in books and scientific journals in the field of Italian language and literature.

Over the course of 20 volumes published (containing approximately 500,000 bibliographic information, from about 9,000 of the vol. I, to more than 30,000 of the last), the BiGLI has emerged as a fundamental tool for scientific and knowledge work, achieved through the accurate registration of all the materials published: editions of texts, critical and historical surveys, philological and linguistic notes, essays, monographs, reviews, and bibliographic reviews, etc., affecting the entire historical period of Italian literature from the origins of language and literature written, to the present, providing guidance about the content, the articulation of the issues addressed, references to sub-themes. In fact, a census of the diffusion and dissemination of Italian culture in the world.

The organization relies on a large editorial team of cataloguers organized in Italian and foreign Editors: 6 Editorial units in Italy and 33 Editorial units or correspondence centers around the world — from Los Angeles and Madison (USA1 and USA2) — to Paris, from Tokyo to Beijing, from Moscow, Warsaw, etc., to Thessaloniki, Malta, Buenos Aires, etc.—, sending the relating records to their production of studies and editions of texts in the field of Italian Studies. The BiGLI, therefore, extends the inquiry to the foreign production, with a completeness of data unknown to similar works carried out abroad for other literatures and languages. For each item is described the content, with the counting of any minor and internal item and a reference to all the sub-themes treated.

The BiGLI has received over the years, many awards and appreciations, both Italian and international, among whom there were, the patronage of UNESCO, and in 1994, the compliments of Terence Ford (MLA), as well as several rewards of great personalities of the italian culture.

From 2014 BiGLI comes enriched with an online database, which integrates in a single computerized archive all vintages published to date (1991-2014). The database will fill in the gaps and correct any errors that are discovered after the online publication.

It is thus an indispensable means of information, essential for scientific research, which also allows to make a final, complete, capillary recording of an immense material, the memory of which would otherwise be irreversibly lost to posterity, as it’s hardly usable for contemporaries. The area of interest of the BiGLI on line is extraordinarily broad, encompassing all the libraries in the world who want to offer to the scholars (but even to the simple amateur) of the Italian language and literature, a bibliographic update of extraordinary breadth, quality and accuracy.