FAO Library started building the Core Collection of the Organization in 1946, one year after the foundation of FAO. After more than 75 years of existence, the library has built a Core Collection of 170,000 monographs and around 13,000 journal titles in print from a wide variety of publishers covering all the fields of work of the Organization. 

Please note that this collection does not include FAO publications as these are kept in the "FAO Institutional Memory Collection".

The Centre International de Sylviculture (CIS) was founded in 1939 in Berlin, Germany, under the auspices of the International Institute of Agriculture. One of the main tasks of the CIS was to establish an exhaustive international collection of documentation related to forests, forestry, and the timber industry.  

After the CIS ceased operations at the end of World War II in 1945, the surviving part of its library collection was entrusted to FAO: 13,000 journals and monographs showing the beginnings of forestry as a science from the eighteenth century until the twentieth.

Donations by renowned scholars

A number of renowned scholars also donated their collections: in 1925 for example, the library received over 10 000 brochures on chemistry and agriculture from the collection of Italo Giglioli, professor of agricultural chemistry at the University of Pisa.  

Politician and prolific author Arturo Marescalchi donated a complete and unique compendium of work on viniculture and viticulture  in 1941.

In 1942, Dr. Giorgio Carrega donated a small collection of rare books on agriculture and related topics. 

Donations by institutions

The Library also received donations from institutions worldwide. In 1926, the United States Library of Congress donated a set of publications from the Department of Agriculture, as well as a card catalogue of 190 000 entries. In 1930, the Società Agraria della Provincia di Bologna donated its entire collection to the IIA library. 

The David Lubin Archive consists of the correspondence of David Lubin (1849-1919), an American agriculturalist of Polish origin who envisioned the first international organization dedicated to agriculture. Lubin came up with the idea as a response to the globalization of trade and national protectionist policies of the second half of the 19th century.

In 1905 Lubin managed to realize his ideas with the establishment of the International Institute of Agriculture (IIA) in Rome, Italy. Forty years later, upon the foundation of FAO in 1945, it was decided that FAO would absorb the mandate and assets of the IIA and become the custodian of the IIA Library.  

The archive consists of 20,000 sheets of correspondence to the statesmen, politicians, journalists and writers of his time, documenting his ideas, motivation and enduring quest to realize his vision.   

Rare books and incunabula

One of the most remarkable donations was 400 volumes of rare books and incunabula (books printed before 1501) from the Marquise Raffaele Cappelli, second President of the IIA. In 1915 Cappelli began transferring his collection to the library, which included several editions by Virgil, Columella and Aristotle, editions published by the first Venetian editor, Manutius, and a beautiful edition of the Hortus Romanus, published in Rome from 1772 to 1793.  

Chinese donations

The Library also received up to 407 volumes of esteemed Chinese books on agriculture. Particularly noteworthy among these were a rare work on agriculture and silk-culture, published during the reign of the Emperor Kangxi in the eighteenth century, donated by Xu Shichang, President of China, and several classics works donated by the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Lou Tseng-Tsiang, after his visit to the IIA in 1919.