The Historical Archive was established in 2001. It preserves the main types of documents produced by the Institute: official and administrative acts, methodological studies and researches, questionnaire models, statistical analyses, preparatory material for surveys, reports and project analyses of collegial bodies, brochures and press releases.
In order to establish the Historical Archive, first of all, all documentary material produced by Istat was collected, as well as the still existing documentation previously produced by the General General Statistics Departmentfor of the Ministry of Agriculture, Industry and Trade, which later merged with the Institute in 1926.
The filing intervention affected therefore the archival documentation of the Institute relating to the period from the origins of the activity up to 2002.
Data collection was carried out taking into consideration the type and method of preservation of the material examined: for example, for payment and collection orders, filing of the storage units was sufficient, which contain the individual documents sorted by year and issue number. In other series, on the other hand, it was appropriate to carry out a more analytical filing, by describing individual issues or groups of papers.
By examining the papers, it was found that Istat documentation was organized according to two previous classification systems, one presumably in force from the origins of the Institute until the end of 1946 and another that entered into force on January 1, 1947, applied until introduction of the new system in 1956.
The work of reconstructing and sorting the series led to the identification of two large sections in which the general archive was organized:
- a collection of papers (both original and in copy) ordered according to a classification scheme by subject and by entity, which testifies to the activity of the Institute in its totality and entirety, regardless of the internal partitions of competence, called the Central Archive;
- a collection of papers organized into funds corresponding to the various producer offices, structured in series according to criteria set by each office and functional to the performance of their tasks, called Local Archives.
There was therefore a double and parallel system for collecting and storing papers: documentation relating to a file could also be found preserved (at least in some of its parts) in both partitions.
The new organization of the archive since 1956 has resulted in the dismemberment some existing series, which have been brought to the arrangement suggested by the new classification scheme.
A comparative prospectus between the classification schemes from 1947 and the previous one was also found. Therefore, even if the original organization of some series, especially the oldest ones, has been lost, it is however possible to outline their structure at least virtually through this same prospectus.
Part of the documentation prior to 1956 had not been included in the new organization: these files have been placed within the series of documentary complexes belonging to the local archives.
Continue reading, deepen the Articulation of the Historical Archive.
Consult the funds cards in Istat Multimedia Historical Archive.