The Italian Minister of Cultural Assets and Activities and Tourism has presented a reform project of the Ministry that heavily penalizes archives. Due to budget constraints, the government had decided to cut by 20% directing positions in the public sector. For the archives, however, the cut nearly reaches 50%.
Over the past 75 years, one of the strengths of the Italian archival system have been the Archival Supervision Agencies, and the proposed reform abolishes them.
The Archival Supervision Agencies are in charge of protecting the non-state archives. They declare the special cultural value of private archives. They provide assistance and guidelines to the archives of municipalities, regions and other public bodies and to private archives of special cultural value; they provide professional training, and so on and so forth. In case of disasters (floods, earthquakes, etc.), the Archival Supervision Agencies help municipalities and other public bodies to recover their archives. According to the proposed reform, from now on the State Archives should perform such functions, as they were supposed to do until 1939. But it did not work.
We thus ask you to sign the petition to the Italian Minister of Cultural Assets and Activities and Tourism, to save the Archival Supervision Agencies.
PLEASE, IF YOU SIGN THE PETITION, INDICATE YOUR PROFESSIONAL AFFILIATION
We opened the petition on July 17, and it already reached more than 900 signatures of archivists (including many who work in archives which are under the supervision of the Archival Supervision Agencies), professors of archival science and historians.
Giulia Barrera
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Giulia Barrera, Ph.D.
Directorate General of Archives,
International Relations
Via Gaeta, 8/a
00185 Roma, Italia
tel. +3906 49225308
Skype name: giubar6
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