Progetto Lombardo Archivi in INternet–PLAIN (Lombardy Project for Archives on the Internet): Identification, Retrieval, and Display of Creators of Archives and of Archival Fonds

The Progetto Lombardo Archivi in INternet (PLAIN1), which is coordinated by the University of Pavia, on the basis of an agreement with the Regione Lombardia, an agreement in which the State Archives of Milan is also represented, intends to create an environmentenabling easy public access to the wide heritage of descriptions in electronic format of historical archives preserved in Lombardy. Databases produced over the years that include a remarkable quantity of descriptive records are made available for consultation as a whole, while the system is implemented by the inclusion of further descriptive records processed within ongoing archival inventory and census projects. In addition, PLAIN should provide a structure able to receive, organize and display on the Web the descriptive records created from 1997 onwards within the project Civita, also promoted by the Regional Authorities. More evolved instruments of integration will therefore be provided in order to enable integrated searching. This paper is focused on some of the problems concerning the organization and presentation of archival descriptions, with particular reference to the creation of a system of lists referring to archival collections and the creators of archives described in the system. The conclusions indicate how the adopted solutions foreshadow further integration between the whole body of archival descriptions and the historical-institutional profiles of the Civita project, and how they open up promising perspectives of communication with other external systems. [Article copies available for a fee from The Haworth Document Delivery Service: 1-800-HAWORTH. E-mail address: Website: © 2004 by The Haworth Press, Inc. All rights reserved.]