The official site of Italy's central bank

The database contains over 200,000 archival descriptions (inventory records), organized hierarchically by level - Archive, Fonds, Sub-fonds, Archival series, Holding unit (Archival unit, file, sub-file, document).

These inventory records cover more than 40% of the documentation held in the most commonly consulted fonds and sub-fonds.

Since 1988 additions have been made continually to the database which has migrated several times as software and hardware technology has evolved.

The descriptions are extremely detailed and separate original data from later additions. For each holding unit, an abstract describes the content in the necessary amount of detail.

Specific inventory records, with pdf attachments, are used to describe the higher hierarchical levels (Archive, Fonds, Sub-fonds, Archival series) following ISAD(G) guidelines.

The system can be navigated hierarchically through the various levels or occasional searches can be made across the whole database or at specific levels. In all cases, the descriptive records are anchored to their place in the archival hierarchy. The entire database is open to consultation at all times, including those inventory records that have recently been prepared but have not yet been ascribed to a particular level of the hierarchy: in this case, users are informed that the record is still under preparation.

Once the required description has been found, it is possible to consult any accompanying digitalized images immediately. These are stored on a system of magnetic disks available on-line and on CD. Today in 2007, around 15 million images are available, some of which in colour.

There are laws regarding the length of time that must elapse before a document can be consulted. The system is able to block access to files, sub-files or single records that have not yet reached the required age.

Users can bookmark images from documents to reproduce on their own databases. The technical staff will then print a paper copy or save them on CD.