ABSTRACT
In 2005, a research project initiated at Loughborough University to investigate the links between libraries and museums highlighted how the institutional relationships between museums and libraries are more balanced and effective when they share the same space. This tends to blur the boundaries that distinguish museums, libraries and archives in the digital arena, suggesting similar forms of hybridisation also in the physical environment. This dual identity marked what is probably the first case of intentional musealisation of a library space. The cardinal, thinking about public access to the cultural orthodoxy of the time, wanted to establish a library open to everyone and able, as well, to represent the relevance of Counter-Reformation knowledge. In fact, one of the latest examples of library musealisation, the Bidoun Library, also deals with a transnational and jeopardised identity.
