The National Diary Archive of Pieve Santo Stefano is a public facility. Therefore the material conserved there is available for public consultation. Users of the Archive must complete and sign the consultation form and undersign the “Rules of use for the texts of the Archive”.

Isis Cataloguing
This is a system of cataloguing used by many libraries and supplied free by the DBA thanks to the support of UNESCO. The Archive has adopted this ISIS system, called Isis/diari, developed here at Pieve in agreement with the archives of popular writing and the Servizio Beni Librari della Regione Toscana (Region of Tuscany Libraries Service). Since September 2000 it has been possible to consult the catalogue directly online.

Each online entry contains around forty fields: author, sex, date of birth, profession, title of material, medium, genre, geographical location, abstract, subject, key words, places cited, special events and people, chronological timespan of material, description of manuscript if it exists in the archive, time of its writing and lots more information.

A special contribution from the central archival office of the Ministry of Culture allowed the Foundation to complete the back-cataloguing of the archive in 97/98. Currently all the texts entered in the 'National Diary Archive' and 'Testimonies' sections of the Pieve Prize, from its inception in 1985 until today, are catalogued. There is also a catalogue of the Library of the Archive, containing some 1200 texts. The catalogue, available online, is consultable at the following address: Opac Arezzo. The abbreviation used for the Archive Library is “PSS”.
The cataloguing of the competition entries takes place during the selection phase of the Prize. The texts, however, are not available for consultation until this selection process is complete and the works have been stored in the archive.

The general inventory, edited by Luca Ricci in collaboration with the central state Archive, was published by the Minisrty for Cultural Monuments and Activities in July 2003.

Sezione Concorso - Competition Section
Each year, the texts that have participated in the competition are catalogued in the Competition Section using the ISIS system. Since the inauguration of the Prize, an annual catalogue listing the texts entered in the competition has been printed. Since 2000 this printed list has been replaced by the online catalogue which is continually updated. In the computer cataloguing process the texts that have taken part in the Pieve Prize are each given a separate shelf-mark according to genre (personal diaries, war diaries and travel diaries; personal memoirs and war memoirs; epistolaries).

Sezione Adn - ADN Section
The ADN Section comprises of texts that haven't participated in the Pieve Prize, either at to the wishes of the author or owner, for reasons of discretion, because the author is unknown, or because the text is written in a foreign language. Some texts in this section are not available for consultation at the expressed wishes of the author. The ADN section is catalogued with ISIS.

Sezione Testimonianze - Testimonies Section
In this section are contained texts that were not included in the Pieve Prize due to their brevity. The testimonies section was created in 1988 and is catalogued with ISIS.

Biblioteca Adn - ADN Library
The ADN library comprises of publications relating to diaries and memories, studies on 'separating events' (war, emigration) and other works on popular writing and autobiography which the Archive at Pieve has been able to find. This section grows thanks only to generous donations from the authors, institutions and publishers who promote and publish these books. Consequently, it is somewhat limited in its coverage of the subject. The Archive is only rarely able to purchase documents for this section, and therefore it lacks many fundamental resource. However, thanks to the generosity of some authors and institutions, the ADN library contains many interesting publications and even some foreign ones. The Archive also regularly receives specialist journals (see Rassegna degli Archivi di Stato, or historical subject journals, for example, Materiali di lavoro, Studi e ricerche di storia contemporanea, Ventesimo secolo, Quaderno di storia contemporanea, In/formazione, L'Impegno).

Also collected in this section are various published or printed autobiographical texts. These haven't been entered in the Pieve Prize as the competition is reserved for unedited writing only. For the most part these texts consist of privately printed works, usually edited by the author themselves.

Also included in this section are the texts that have previously won the Pieve Prize and have subsequently been published by the Archive. It is always useful when consulting a published diary, to be able to refer to the original text entered in the competition, as in many cases the publication is only partial or edited in some manner.

Theses that cite materials from the Archive in Pieve are also conserved in this section. A list of the theses is available on the website also.

The Archive library has became a significant resource for studies conducted in the Archive. For the latest updates please consult the Library page on the internet site.


Fuori Concorso - Out of Competiton
Texts that cannot be entered in the competition, nor the Library section, are conserved in a separate section called 'Out of Competition'. Here one can find collections of poems, stories, writings in the third person (not accepted in the annual selection since the 2002 Pieve Prize), biographies, cinematic material and any other material that the author may consider autobiographical but which do not comply with the rules of the competition. This section is yet to be catalogued. The materials are stored in the archive in alphabetic order.

Theses and doctorates of research
Any students wishing to use the Archive for the preparation of a thesis or doctorate are requested to supply the Archive with a copy of their thesis or research upon it's completion. These documents are available for consultation within the Archive with the consent of the author.

Rules of consultation
All the materials of the archive can be consulted on site, except where specified in the ADN section or under any other particular circumstance regarding a texts consultability as detailed by the author themselves (limitations of reading and/or copying of extracts).

For unedited diaries, photocopying is permitted up to a limit of 10% of the total manuscript. Researchers are asked to respect the privacy of authors. Diarists will receive information with regards to the use of extracts of their texts. For suitability of quoting names, places or personal histories contained within the diaries please consult the Archive. Research conducted within the archives must not be used for commercial purposes. Those interested in consulting the archives must abide by the rules of use.

A special card exists for students wishing to borrow items from the archives. For a yearly fee of Euro 50,00 it is possible to receive texts from the Archive at home (up to a limit of 3 texts a month). This fee includes a year's free subscription to Primapersona. However, students must have completed at least three days research in the Archive before this service is available.

The archive is open to the public Monday to Friday, 8:30 – 13:30 and 15:00 – 18:00. During certain periods of the year and in exceptional circumstances the hours may be subject to variation. Therefore we recommend you telephone for information before arrival.


translated by David Vivian

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