In this section of the portal, we have systematically brought together all research aids that can be consulted online.

The section is divided into themes:

• genealogical research;
• religious institutes and bodies;
• military sources;
• immigration;
• local history;
• demographic trends;
• cemetery registry.

The pages of the individual State Archives in the Explore the Archives section of the portal provide further useful resources for researching individual institutions.

Genealogical research

• Anagrafe degli amministratori locali e regionali. The database established by the Ministry of the Interior. Department for Internal and Territorial Affairs, collects information on those elected to local and regional offices (municipalities, provinces, metropolitan cities and regions Inside, it is possible to retrieve personal data, the list or group to which they belong or to which they are linked, their qualifications and the profession they exercise. The searched date cannot be less than 06/06/1982.
• Ancestry. Is a private company that offers genealogical research services for a fee The site collects a number of databases based on data from various civil status registers, i.e. Italian civil status records, relating to births, marriages and deaths. The databases are divided by locality and cover rather heterogeneous chronological arcs. Ancestry also provides services for a fee.
• D.P.L.A: Digital Public Library of America. Founded in 2010 on the initiative of several libraries, universities and foundations, it is supported by the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University and funded by the Alfred Sloan Foundation. The site offers a section dedicated to genealogical research.
• Family Search. Is an international non-profit organisation offering free tools for genealogical research. From the site, one can access billions of digitised documents from all over the world. Users can create their own free account.
• Geneaindex. This site was created with the intention of republishing and disseminating historical and genealogical works on the Internet before they are lost due to the demise of Internet sites. The site provides numerous references to research tools, such as specialised sites and portals dedicated to genealogical investigations. It also contains video tutorials (also in Italian) on how to carry out genealogical research.
• GeneaNet. Created in 1996 by a few genealogy enthusiasts, GeneaNet is a community with more than 5 million members, who share their genealogical information: more than 8 billion individuals in family trees, digitised archive documents, family photographs, extracts, etc. all available for free thanks to a powerful search engine and a blog.
• Italian Genealogical Group. Site of the Italian Genealogical Group (I.G.G.), established in 1993, dedicated to the promotion of Italian family history and genealogy provides support to those interested in researching their Italian ancestors.
• My Heritage. Is a free online platform. A search engine of sorts, it combines the power of over 1,400 genealogical databases worldwide in one easy-to-use interface The site also provides useful spelling variations for surnames, allowing multi-variation searches to be conducted in parallel.

Religious Institutes and Bodies

• Archivi Storici Diocesani. The Register of Ecclesiastical Cultural Institutes (AICE) refers to an alphabetical list subdivided by Region (policy), as it appears on the BeWeb site of the Catholic Church as of 26 March 2021. Each institute has its own link that refers directly to the institutional website of the selected Diocesan Historical Archive, which is useful to have contacts and basic information before starting a search.
• Archivio Storico della Diocesi di Agrigento. The Diocese of Agrigento has made available online some parish registers of the Diocese of Agrigento, where it is possible, through free registration, to consult the digitised parish registers of the diocese.
• Archivio Storico della Diocesi di Como. The Fondazione Centro Studi Nicolò Rusca has made the Baptisms database, where baptism registers produced by the Cathedral Baptistery, the parishes of San Fedele and San Donnino in Como from 1830 to 1866 can be searched by name.
• Archivio Storico dell’Unione delle Comunità Ebraiche Italiane (UCEI). The site offers users the digitisation in PDF format of the paper inventories of the archival fonds kept at UCEI’s Tullia Zevi Bibliographic Centre.
• BeWeb Portale dei beni culturali ecclesiastici. The portal is an access point to the impressive census of the historical, artistic, architectural and archival heritage of all Italian dioceses and ecclesiastical cultural institutes. From the Archival Assets section, it is possible to access the descriptive files on the fonds, the producers and the preserving institutions. At the moment, 1,200 archival fonds corresponding to the holdings of 75 institutes are available, but the site is constantly being updated and new publications are constantly being made.
• Comunità ebraica di Mantova. The site provides access to the documentation produced by the Jewish Community of Mantua from 1522 until after the Second World War. In the section registres it is possible to consult 42 civil status registers covering the chronological span from the 18th to the 19th century.
• Opera di Santa Maria in Fiore. It has made part of the Historical Archive of the Florence Cathedral, of the Archdiocese of Florence, available for consultation the baptismal registers from 1450 to 1900 for a total number of 445 registers. The search, within the database, can be carried out in two ways: 1) List: allows you to select a register from the complete list for a card-by-card consultation; 2) Search: by entering certain parameters (chronological span, gender and initial letter), you can consult the cards of several registers that meet the chosen conditions.
• Patrimonio Culturale Metodista e Valdese. The site is a portal through which to explore the digitised assets of the vast Methodist and Waldensian cultural heritage in Italy. From the Archival Assets section it is possible to consult the description of the fonds relating to the archives of the various local churches.

Military sources

• Albo d’Oro dei Caduti. The Ministry of Defence provides two databases of the fallen and missing of the First and Second World War. It is possible to obtain the name along with birth details, the department to which they belonged and the place and date of death.
• Albo degli I.M.I. The Associazione Nazionale Reduci dalla Prigionia, dall’Internamento, dalla Guerra di Liberazione e loro familiari (ANRP) has made available the register of Italian Military internees (I.M.I.) in which the biographical and personal details of Italian military internees, who lost their lives in the Third Reich camps between 1943 and 1945, are included.
• Arolsen Archives. The Arolsen Archives are an international documentation, information and research centre on Nazi persecution, forced labour and the Holocaust in Germany and occupied regions, located in Bad Arolsen in Germany. The archive contains around 30 million documents from the concentration camps, details of the deportation, internment, forced labour and imprisonment of both Italian military and civilians.
• Associazione Culturale di Ricerche Storiche Pico Cavalieri. On the website of the Pico Cavalieri Cultural Association for Historical Research it is possible to consult the lists of the Fallen of Ferrara and its province in the First and Second World Wars. It is also possible to consult and download the Albo d’Oro dei Caduti ferraresi 1848-1945 in PDF format.
• Associazione Nazionale Reduci dalla Prigionia. On the site of the Associazione Nazionale Reduci della Prigionia dall’Internamento, dalla Guerra di Liberazione (National Association of Prisoners of Liberation War) and their relatives, it is possible to consult a database, in which are entered, in systematic order, biographical and personal details of Italian civilian workers in the Third Reich who were subjected to forced labour in Germany to support the German war economy between 1943-1945. The online database is organised in such a way as to be able to easily, quickly and selectively trace the personal and biographical data of thousands of people, give them a name and possibly even a face.
• Croce Rossa Italiana. The Historical Archive of the Milan Red Cross has the task of collecting, preserving and enhancing the historical documentation relating to the activities that have characterised the association over time. The recent project to reorganise and recondition the documentary heritage stems from the need to return the Historical Archive to the Milan Red Cross Committee and to the citizens, making this material usable in the city where on 15 June 1864 the first Committee of the Italian Association for Relief to the Wounded and Sick in War, later to become the Italian Red Cross, was established. The archive holds over 1660 archival units, bearing witness to the history of assistance and charity organisations in Italy.
• Istituto Ligure per la Storia e la Resistenza dell’età Contemporanea. On the site, it is possible to consult the more than 34,000 files that make up the Ligurian Partisan Database based on the files produced by the Ligurian regional commission for the recognition of partisan qualifications and now kept at the Central State Archive.
• Istituto Storico della Resistenza in Piemonte. Produced as a result of research directed by Claudio Dellavalle and conducted by the Piedmont Resistance History Institutes in cooperation with the Ministry of Defence, the computer database contains 108. 421 names of fighting partisans, patriots, and well-deserving who carried out activities during the Liberation struggle in Piedmont, taken from the summary sheets of personal files, kept in the archives of the Ufficio Riconpart (Office for the Recognition of Qualifications and Rewards to Partisans), of files examined by the Piedmont, Liguria and Lombardy Commissions for ascertaining partisan qualifications.
• Istituto Storico per la Storia della resistenza e della Società Contemporanea di Provincia di Asti. Several databases relating to the province can be consulted on the site: Asti War Victims, including those who died in the First and Second World Wars, Asti Political Deportees and War Prisoners and Military internees.
• Partigiani d’Italia. In 2017, the Central Institute for Archives (ICAR) launched this project to make the files on applications for recognition of partisan qualifications kept in the Ricompart fund at the Central State Archives accessible to researchers and a wide public.
• Solferino e San Martino. The site is a useful search engine for the fallen soldiers of the Battle of Solferino and San Martino of 24 June 1859.
• Unione Nazionale Italiana Reduci di Russia. On the website it is possible to consult the on-line database containing the names of the Italian Fallen and Missing during the Russian campaign that took place between 1941 and 1943. By filling in at least one of the mandatory search fields, it is possible to find detailed descriptions of each of the names in the list. Access to the database is permitted only to users who have registered for free on the site.
• Vicentini caduti o dispersi in Russia. The National Alpine Association, Vicenza Monte Pasubio Section has published online a database containing 2,523 names of Vicenza citizens who fell or went missing during the Russian Campaign (1941-1943). It is possible to search by name, surname, place and date of birth, rank, division and battalions to which they belonged, as well as date and place of death.

Immigration

• Archivo General de la Nación Argentina. The site of the General Archive of the Argentine Nation contains the records of the Immigration Commission from 1825 to 1828. It also provides a remote search service in which the user can request copies of immigrant files in Buenos Aires between 1630 and 1930, decrees produced by the National Executive Power between 1947 and 2016, and high-resolution photographic, audiovisual and sound documents.
• Archivio Pubblico del Minas Gerais. The site of the Minas Gerais Public Archives (APM), superintendent of the Secretariat of State for Culture, deals with the collection of documents produced and accumulated by the executive branch of Minas Gerais, as well as private documentation of public interest. Among the resources on the site is a database of immigrants who arrived in the state between 1888 and 1901.
• Archivio Pubblico dello Stato di Espírito Santo. The Public Archive of the State of Espírito Santo started a project called Projeto Imigrantes Espírito, in which a database is published where information on immigrants can be found, such as: lists of boarding on ships and disembarkation at destination ports, check-in and check-out lists for pensions, passports, registration and census of agricultural colonies, other institutional documents.
• Archivio Pubblico dello Stato di San Paolo. The Public Archive of the State of São Paulo holds numerous series of documents recording the entry of immigrants into the state of São Paulo, Brazil. These include the lists of passengers disembarked at the port of Santos between 1888 and 1978, the registration books of the Hospedaria de Imigrantes do Brás one of the largest reception centres for foreigners in Brazil between 1886 and 1973, and finally the people registered at the specialised police stations for foreigners in the State of São Paulo between 1939 and 1984.
• Archivio Pubblico dello Stato di Paranà. The Registro de Imigrantes database allows searches among the more than 100,000 names of those who landed in the port of Paranaguá between the years 1876 to 1879 and 1885 to 1896.
• Archivio Storico Comunale di Alvito, Palazzo Gallio. The site has two sections: Emigration between the 19th and 20th centuries, containing extensive digitised documentation; The face of emigration (1916-1931), in which passport applications have been digitised with photographs attached, also providing useful biographical references.
• Archives Departementales des Alpes-Maritimes. In the Généalogie section, it is possible to consult the digitised civil status registers for all the municipalities in the department In addition, a database called Immigration italienn is available, in which naturalisation practices between 1880 and 1931, expulsion practices up to 1935 and population censuses of Grasse from 1891 to 1931 have been digitised. Parish registers of baptisms and marriages in the parishes of Nice from 1814 to 1860 are also available.
• Archives of Ontario. The site makes available a database containing assisted immigration records compiled by the Toronto Emigrant Office between 1865 and 1883, with over 29,000 names.
• Centro Altreitalie sulle migrazioni Italiane. The Centro Altreitalie sulle Migrazioni Italiane (Altreitalie Centre on Italian Migrations), established in the autumn of 2005 at the Giovanni Agnelli Foundation, operates with the support of the Compagnia di San Paolo. Since 2009, it has found a new institutional location in Globus et Locus, one of the main actors in Italy active in the analysis of issues related to the dialectic between global and local. The Centre proposes itself as a place for research, meetings, and cultural cooperation in the field of Italian migration and communities of Italian origin in the world. In addition, in the Search for your roots section, it is possible to consult a database containing three distinct databases, containing the transcription of information in the disembarkation registers of ships that arrived in the ports of New York, Buenos Aires and Vitoria, limited to passengers of Italian nationality.
• CEMLA: Centro de Estudios Migratorios Latinoamericanos. Database covering the registrations of immigrants of all nationalities who arrived in Argentina, up to 1960. There are more than 4 million registered migrants, whose personal data, country of origin, dates of travel and the ship they travelled on can be retrieved.
• Center for Family History and Genealogy at Brigham Young University. The Centre for Family History and Genealogy at Brigham Young University has launched the Immigrant Ancestors project. The user has the possibility of researching the documentation on emigration that was produced in Europe. These documents provide us with important information about the place and date of birth of each migrant. It is possible to search by archive/conservative body, on the documentation produced in Italy in the Italian language, there are four archival series that can be consulted: Naples clandestine emigration; Passport Requests Naples 1888-1901; Prefecture of Genoa 1858-1872; Passport Request Turin 1903-1905.
• Centro Internazionale Studi Emigrazione Italiana. The database Dal Porto al Mondo of the CISEI contains information from several archives, including Liste di imbarco tratte dai Registri di Sanità Marittima of the Genova State Archives for the period 1833-1856.
• Delaware Public Archives. The Delaware Public Archives has made several naturalisation records (1796 to 1820) available (in digital format) in the Digital Ancestry section. A free registration is required to access them.
• Fondazione Paolo Cresci. The Paolo Cresci Foundation collects extremely heterogeneous material, the result of patient and meticulous research and accumulation work by Paolo Cresci, and then continued by his wife. The collection includes correspondence, postcards, original and non-original photographs, magazines, newspapers, books and various personal items that belonged to a variety of people who left Italy in search of fortune between the 19th and 20th centuries. There is a specific database to research Tuscans who landed in Argentina between 1906 and 1952.
• Library and Archives Canada. In the Immigration records section, a database containing over 20,000 name references to the passenger lists of those who landed at ports in various Canadian locations between 1865 and 1922 can be consulted.
• Libraries Tasmania. The site makes available lists of passengers who arrived in Tasmania from 1803 to 1900. In addition, there are Tasmanian Civil Status records from 1803 to 1920.
• Missouri State Archives. The site has made available a database of all naturalization documents produced in the various counties of the state of Missouri from 1816 to 1955. It is possible to search by name.
• National Archives. The National Archives in Washington D.C. offers a rich database of immigrant registrations in the U.S. from the mid-1800s to the mid-2000s.
• National Archives of Australia. The National Archives of Australia, in the Immigration and citizenship section offers rich databases, of particular interest are Passenger arrivals records contains passenger arrival records; Citizenship records contains documents relating to applying for Australian citizenship.
• Pubblic Record of Victoria. The Passenger records and immigration section contains records of passengers disembarked in Victoria state in South Australia.
• South Australia’s State Archives Department. The site makes available lists of passengers who arrived in South Australian ports between 1845 and 1940.
• The Statue of Liberty—Ellis Island Foundation, Inc. Site related to the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island monumental complex. The site offers a wealth of information on the history of immigration. The site has a section entitled Find your family, where you can access a database of the records of ships that arrived at Ellis Island. The ship logs contain the biographical, physical and psychological details of the newly disembarked migrants, the date of departure and arrival, the name of the ship and any relatives or kin. To access, a free registration is required.

Local history

• Archivio Monumentale del Novecento in Friuli Venezia Giulia. The site constitutes a portal through which a vast heritage of archival, photographic and audiovisual sources relating to the region can be inventoried and catalogued. In the context of this project, of particular importance is the section called the Partisanship Card, which allows the user, by selecting the name of interest from those in the list, to find detailed biographical information and sometimes even digitised images of the documents relating to the person sought.
• Archivio Online del Novecento Trentino. Platform through which it is possible to access thousands of biographical files on the Trentino people who lived in the last century. The site offers the possibility of searching for the desired name within five databases: Trentino soldiers in the Second World War, Trentino Volunteers in the Great War, Opponents of Fascism, Trentino Legionaries in Spain (1936- 1939) and Women and Men of the Resistance. Each card provides useful biographical information regarding the name to which it refers.
• Deputazioni e società di Storia e Patria. The list is in alphabetical order by (political) region, each Deputation and Society of Homeland History has its own link directly to the selected Deputation and Society of Homeland History institutional website.
• Parma ‘900. A platform created by the Historical Institute of the Resistance and Contemporary Age of Parma (Isrec) with the aim of providing, through databases, an organic documentation on the men and women who lived through the history of Parma in the 20th century. Launched in 2018, Parma ‘900 was originally created around the construction of an initial database on allied prisoners of war held in the PG49 prison camp in Fontanellato.
• Toscana ‘900. A portal where it is possible to consult three important databases relating to the region: Partisans and Patriots, the Central Political Records, comprising over 750 files on as many people surveyed from the end of the 19th century to the Second World War and resident in Tuscany, and the over 400 name files on Tuscan Volunteers in the Spanish Civil War.

Demographic trends

• GenPop. The European-funded GENPOP project studies long-term demographic processes in family networks from 1800 to the present, based on existing genealogy data available on the Internet. Through the use of innovative Big Data and micro-census data, it examines fertility and mortality in family networks and diversity between and within families across generations, to understand the impact of migration over the years and to delineate long-term patterns of assorted mating.

Cemetery registry

• Caduti Grande Guerra. A project, promoted by the Province of Gorizia, created for the preservation through digitisation of the historical lists of soldiers who fell in the First World War and are buried in the military burial grounds of Redipuglia, Oslavia, Aquileia, Caporetto/Kobarid, the temple of San Nicolò di Udine, the temple of Timau and the Faro Monument on Mount Bernadia. Through this site it is possible to consult the lists, acquiring the exact burial place of each individual fallen soldier and other information such as the department of service and the place of first burial.
• Find a Grave. Site of the Ancestry Group, a private company offering genealogical research services. The site is a database of burial sites since 1995. It contains over 226 million memorial pages.