The Census of the archives of Cultural Personalities in Tuscany between 800's and 900's is a project promoted both by the Tuscany Region, the Supervision Agency of Tuscany, the General Directorate for Archives of the Ministry of Cultural Heritage and Activities, the Universities of Tuscany and numberous Cultural Institutions, willing to make available to the public the «result of a work of many years spent collecting information and data on a specific type of archives: the archives of personalities». The project's aim is to prepare files on the archival fonds of personalities that will not be just a generic information about the existence of an archive, but will give a full and as possibile detailed description of what was preserved, with the obvious limits of a general guide and of the existing finding aids and bibliography. Beside this, to make easier to understand the structure of the fonds and to help those scholars who do not know the biographies of the several hundreds personalities mentioned in the census, a short biography and a description of the archival history of the fond are provided.

The census is a very complex and long term project, that started more than ten years ago, and published, during that time, two local guides the one about the fiorentine area and the other about the province of Pisa andd to the building up of a data set, still not a fully ended one, however large, concerning the other provinces of Tuscany.

In comparison with the first years of the project, however, the use of the web is now notably improved: the net is now a valid mean that gives opportunities we could not even imagine few years ago. A clarifying example is given by the Florentine Guide: the book ( published at the end of 1996) is a picture of a situation that changed partially and, mainly, that is no more complete, because of the considerable number of new archival fonds in the meantime acquired by cultural Institutes and private people. The same you could say also for the Guide of Pisa.

As a consequence, it is necessary to build up a data set, with up to date information, in order to have a picture of the real situation, making, in the meantime, the results of the work that is still going on, available to the large public.
It was decided, in a common agreement, to use the system of the ministry, SIUSA, already tested with the archives overseen by the regional Supervision Agencies, using a different and specific data base This does not mean an end for the books to be published, still very useful: as a matter of fact,the two are related instruments.

The data base will be continuosly updated, both with the information on the fonds already known and with the new ones.

Publications:

Guida agli archivi delle personalità della cultura in Toscana tra '800 e '900. L'area fiorentina, Emilio Capannelli and Elisabetta Insabato editors, Firenze, Olschki, 1996;

Guida agli archivi delle personalità della cultura in Toscana tra '800 e '900. L'area pisana, Emilio Capannelli and Elisabetta Insabato editors, coordinator Romano Paolo Coppini, Firenze, Olschki, 2000.