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Dipartimento di Fisica e Astronomia

Archivio Storico
del Dipartimento di Astronomia

The organization

Drawing of the Moon by Manfredi, 1703
Drawing of the Moon by Manfredi, 1703

The Archives were reorganized and inventoried at the end of the 20th century by Marina Zuccoli, at the time chief librarian of the Department of Astronomy, in cooperation with the Soprintendenza di Bologna ai Beni Archivistici of the Ministero dei Beni Culturali. Both reorganization and inventory have been done saving, as much as possible, the original structure made by Guido Horn d’Arturo. The work was partially financed by the National Research Council and the Department of Astronomy. The first web pages for the electronic access to the inventory were written in collaboration with Laura Peperoni and Fiorella Foscarini, and with Marco Lolli from the Bologna Astronomical Observatory.

Starting from the year 2000 and together with all the Archives of the Italian Astronomical Observatories, the Specola Archives participated to the “Specola 2000” project, established by the Ufficio Centrale dei Beni Archivistici of the Ministero dei Beni Culturali, by the Italian Astronomical Society and by the National Consortium for Astronomy and Astrophysics. Archivists from the local Soprintendenza ai Beni Archivistici (Chiara Dazzi, Giulio Dazzi, Fabiana Gallizia, Marianna Patricola, Francesca Ricci) expanded the then available archival descriptions and analytically described the documents.

A new organization, the inventory of the documents found later and the digitization for online publishing of the archives documents started in 2012, thanks to funds of the “Sistema Museale d’Ateneo” and of the Department of Physics and Astronomy of the Bologna University. A working group has been created by Fabrizio Bònoli, Raffaella Stasi and Diego Zuccato of the Department of Physics and Astronomy, by Agnese Mandrino from the Brera Astronomical Observatory and Mauro Gargano from the Capodimonte Astronomical Observatory, and by Cristina Zangelmi who obtained in 2017 the Master’s degree in Astrophysics and Cosmology with a dissertation on these topics; “Cenacchi Editrice Snc” made the digitization of a large part of the Serie storica Specola.