The Istat Library was formally established in 1926 as part of the establishment of the Central Statistical Institute.
Its initial nucleus consisted of the volumes that came from the Library of the Ministry of Agriculture, from the publishing activity of the Directorate of Statistics of the Kingdom of Italy, from gifts from private individuals and from Italian and foreign public bodies.
At the end of 1929 the volumes were transferred to the Institute's small temporary headquarters on Via di Santa Susanna, and it was not until January 1932 that the library was finally moved to its new home on Via Balbo, where its rational organization began.
Over time the importance of the library within the Institute has grown. Its history is a faithful mirror of the changes that have occurred in the Italian statistical landscape. In addition to publications published by the Institute, the documentation available to users includes works on statistical and socio-economic subjects, by Italian and foreign authors, from statistical institutes around the world and from international bodies.
Since 1996, the library has become a hub of the National Library System (SBN), consequently offering users the possibility of conducting bibliographic searches in Index, a database with more than 2,000,000 bibliographic records consisting of the catalogs of major Italian libraries. For publications that entered the library in the years 1926-1979, only the printed catalog exists. For publications acquired since 1980, a computer record of the data has been made.