"Hence that sense of new air". Archival debate and historiographical developments in Italy between the early and late 20th century

Abstract

In the second half of the twentieth century it became generally accepted that the goal of the archivist's work should be not only to reconstruct the history of the object’s producer, but also to question its genesis, preservation and the use of documentary nuclei over time. The result was a revisiting of the principles of historical method, thanks in part to the fruitful debate that was established between the community of archivists and that of historians.