Documentary sources on the national movement
of cooperatives up to 1950
The Italian Network on cooperatives and social economy has been realized through the census and mapping of the places where the documentary sources are conserved about the cooperative movement at a national level. Afterwards the censused data have been collected, in Inserti the research terms ; in case more than one research criterium are selected they can be individuated with a database that can be consulted via Internet through a research motor specially studied, only the cooperatives having all the criteria requested will be shown. It is possible through the consultation of the network to individuate on the national territory the presence of cooperative historical archives and their documentarial contents. Now the data obtained allow to make researches in 36 districts of the national territory.
Rosaria Campioni, Euride Fregni, Maurizio Gardini, Giuliano Poletti, Enea Mazzoli, Renata Morrese, Graziano Poli, Elena Romagnoli, Angelo Varni, Vera Negri Zamagni.
The study, the project, the sources and the realization modalities of the network have been defined in a working group made of representers of all the partners. Not being available any anagraphic instrument to individuate the oldest cooperatives, the Documentation Centre, through specific contacts with the cooperative representation centrals, laid the foundations for the realization of a national registry of the cooperatives the constitution of which preceded 1950. Through a direct contact with the cooperatives individuated, an informative questionary about the existency of historic archives, on the type of documents conserved, on the conservation modalities and lastly the localisation of the places of deposit was compiled. The data collected were grouped in a database allowing researches on all the censused categories.