In 2004, we started a participatory-collection of school notebooks, diaries and letters containing testimonies of childhood and adolescence: the material, which can be donated or lent for a period of a few months, is catalogued and digitised, and becomes part of the collection of the Museum of Children’s Notebooks.

The collection, which in 2019 was recognised by the Italian Ministry of Culture as an ‘archive of particularly important historical interest’, includes approximately 1,500 historical notebooks from Italy and around 1,000 notebooks from 35 other countries.

The material, which we preserve both in physical form and, in the case of loans, exclusively in digital form, dates from the late 18th century to the present day. The digital collection, which is enriched day by day, comprises more than 40,000 pages. The notebooks stored in physical form already inventoried number around 650, those stored in digital form around 300.

The collection is managed by the nonprofit-organisation Quaderni Aperti, founded in 2014 with the aim of enhancing the preserved material through cultural and social initiatives and making it available to students, teachers and researchers.