The archives of Trentino in the National Archival System

The archives of Trentino in the National Archival System with an initial number of 50 inventories, which will progressively increase.

The archives of Trentino contain an endless amount of documentary sources which are essential for the knowledge and the historical reconstruction of institutions, families and people who worked on our provincial territory.

In order to draw attention to this extraordinary cultural heritage, still not sufficiently known and used, the Archival and Library Material Office and Provincial Archive Office makes the database of the Historical Archival Information System of Trentino (AST) available to citizens on the website Trentinocultura.

We are dealing with more than 230.000 records related to inventories of public authorities (for the most part municipalities, but also municipal utilities, schools, retirement homes, provincial offices), of private organisations (for the most part parishes, but also associations and cooperatives), as well as of families and people.

In some cases the descriptions of the archive items are supported by the related images, so that it is possible to remotely read the digital version of the whole documents. This happens for projects such as Famiglia Thun (Thun Family), linea di Castel Thun (Thun Castel line). Regesti delle pergamene dell’archivio (1244-1914) (Register of parchments of the archive) and Servizio Azienda Speciale di Sistemazione Montana. Inventario dell’archivio storico (1879-1950) (Special Enterprise Office of Mountain Accommodation. Inventory of the historical archive).

In order to expand the potential audience, in November 2015 an agreement on the accession of AST Sistema archivistico nazionale SAN (i.e. System to the National Archival System, SAN) was signed between the Ministry of Cultural Heritage and Activities and the Autonomous Province of Trento. In addition, this portal, which is rich in textual and multimedia contents, includes data from 35 national, regional, municipal and thematic archival systems.

The aim of the SAN is to collect and uniformly present a selection of high-quality information; therefore, you will not find descriptions of single items (files, registers, ring binders, parchments...), but the necessary elements to identify and locate the documents. The information on archive units, producers and curators refers through appropriate links to the source systems and to the detail data.

The archives of Trentino have been in the lists of SAN for some weeks with an initial number of 50 inventories, which will progressively increase so that all the projects already available on the website Trentinocultura will be exhibited in this national showcase by the end of this year. In this way, the data of the AST system will find a new and wider public.