The General Guide to the Italian State Archives systematically describes all of the archives preserved at the Central State Archive and the State Archives established in every provincial capital - and any associated Sections - according to standard criteria.
Since 2000 the Guide has also been accessible online, both via the records of the State Archives, in PDF format, and through a database which facilitates browsing while maintaining the systematic structure in which the archives were originally organised.
The website makes it possible to view the status and changes to the Italian territory thanks to historical and geographical maps, which present, generally at 100-year intervals, the political situation at various historic moments of particular significance: the Peace Treaties of Lodi (1454), of Cateau-Cambrésis (1559), of Westphalia (1648), of Aix-la-Chapelle (1748), the Napoleonic period (represented at four different moments), the Congress of Vienna (1815) and Italian Unification (1861), through to the map of the current situation, which also includes the regions with special status. Every State is associated with the corresponding framework of archives and relative sources of the records.
The system offers multiple ways of accessing the information: data browsing and interrogation paths have been developed that support traditional keyword searches – either full text or by information field - and the tree structure representation of the records available in the State Archive, with innovative forms of graphical interaction based on geographical or historical-geographical coordinates.
Significantly, the design of the General guide system involves a series of descriptive standards expressed in XML language: EAD for the codification of information relating to archive records, EAC for the structured description of all historical and institutional data (historical contexts, creators, institutional profiles), and RDF-OWL for the historical and geographical context.
