New inventory! CegeSoma's 'Diaries and Manuscripts' Collection.

The history of the 'Diaries and Manuscripts' Collection dates back to the early days of CegeSoma. The very first Communications of the then NSGWO/CREHSGM mention the creation of “a special fund” for diaries, under the responsibility of then researcher José Gotovitch. The collected items were until recently known as the JPs (for journaux personnels) or, after 1999, the Abs.

However, the collection of “diaries” has always functioned as a particularly heterogeneous residual series: indeed, it also included memoirs, accounts and other individual records, as well as publications, ephemera, printed websites and documentation folders. Moreover, from the beginning it was the practice to take items from other archives managed by CegeSoma (including that of the service itself) and classify them in the collection, because of their form or content.

The collection, which contains the pieces acquired between 1969 and 2018, is now described completely and in a full-fledged inventory for the first time. It has been completely rearranged. The 2233 inventory numbers (24 linear meters in total) fall into four major sections:

1. Among the records formed by private individuals and organizations we find the actual diaries (300 nos.). This category is broadly defined and includes, for example, transcripts, transcriptions and edited versions. This section also contains memoirs and accounts (500 nos.), all kinds of historiographical, journalistic or artistic writings (200 nos.) as well as the most diverse loose records (300 nos.).
2. The second section contains documents from the institutional archives of the Center itself (150 nos.). These are mostly incoming letters, often with attachments, in which someone narrates specific self-experienced facts.
3. The documentation section (100 nos.) is, as expected, very heterogeneous. It contains, among other things, excerpts from books and periodicals, folders of clippings and documents once put together because the author wished to inform himself on a certain topic.
4. The last section contains exclusively published works (600 nos.): besides a few brochures, pamphlets or exhibition leaflets, these are mainly memoirs (self-published or otherwise), genealogies, special editions and historical works.

The collection is closed today. Since 2018, diaries or manuscripts of memoirs have been classified like other loose records in a new "Collection of records of private individuals". Self-published works are, of course, in the library collection, and institutional archives remain intact.

The inventory, which replaces previous descriptions in the Pallas catalog, can be found through our search engine Search and is also available as a download. Most of the items in the collection can be freely accessed.

P.S. Do you also own archival documents (photos, letters, diaries, documents of your association, ...) that have a link with the conflicts of the 20th century? Would you like them to be preserved for future generations? Please contact us!