The request
The Italian state archives manage an enormous wealth of historical documents consisting of state documents pre- and post-unification dating back as far as the Middle Ages, notarial archives from over 100 years ago as well as the archives of ecclesiastical bodies and suppressed religious organizations whose assets were confiscated by the state.
The records stored in these institutions includes approximately 1,000,000 loose sheets of parchment and 8,000,000 envelopes, files, books, registers and other records for an incalculable sum of paper and parchment. The collection occupies more than 1,200,000 linear meters of shelving.
Three of the most important state archives; those of Florence, Venice, and Milan, entrusted us to help them manage their documents and leave behind their obsolete, paper-based processes.
The requirements
- The State Archives of Florence, Venice and Milan needed a solution to manage requests for historical documents that would simplify the process for archivists and researchers.
Develer’s contribution
- After analyzing the existing paper-based procedures and gathering functional requirements from the client and users, Develer build and deployed a web-based management system.
Results
- The deployed software permitted researchers to request access to paper documents remotely through the archives’ own web sites. These institutions could then manage, monitor and produce statistics in a way that would not have been possible with their old system.
Advantages of our solution
Much of the documentation present in the archives is of inestimable worth and with plans to make it accessible to the public for consultation, the need arose for software to manage requests for access that:
- kept track of which documents were accessed by a given user
- permitted the archivists to work at maximum efficiency
- simplified the process for requesting access to documents
- enable requests to be submitted via the internet even outside of normal operating hours
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Advantages of our methodology
Close collaboration with the staff of the archives let us produce software that met or exceeded the expectations of these same workers, who were to be its primary users.
Client
Italian state archives