Veneto atlas

The Atlas Veneto project was launched in 2012 following an agreement between the Veneto Region and the Benetton Foundation for the census of printed and manuscript cartographic materials preserved in the region’s libraries and archives.

The project also proposes the promotion of training courses for librarians aimed at cataloguing cartographic materials; the contribution to the drafting of national cataloguing guidelines in agreement with the Central Institute for the Single Catalogue. The implementation of the Atlas Veneto project is a fundamental step towards the valorisation of materials that are still little known and often not catalogued, and at the same time promotes the achievement of the objectives indicated in the European Landscape Convention.

The purpose of Atlas Veneto
In addition to the necessary safeguarding and valorisation of cartography as a cultural asset, it is necessary to understand cartographic materials, both historical and current, as a source, an anamnesis of places, a collective memory of social intentions on the territory and therefore an indispensable tool for any reflection and planning thought on the destiny of places. But above all as an aid to territorial planning, to the drafting of the Regional Territorial Coordination Plan and for the purposes of a better knowledge of the territory and the assets of landscape interest in view of the drafting of the regional landscape plan. Therefore, cartography, both printed and handwritten, constitutes a primary source not only to understand the historical geography and identity of places, first and foremost those in the Veneto region, but above all to contextualise and direct future interventions on the contemporary landscape in the light of previous projects and graphic evidence of the past drawn up by similar public and private stakeholders.

The 2012-2017 reconnaissance campaign and results
Atlas Veneto was divided into reconnaissance campaigns concerning the seven provinces included in the region. In 2012 a methodology was developed that allowed the work to begin in the territory of the province of Treviso. In 2013 the project turned to the province of Padua and the following year to the province of Vicenza. During 2015 the survey covered the provinces of Belluno and Rovigo and in 2016 the remaining provinces of Verona and Venice. The survey revealed the presence of 64,000 volumes including atlases and books with maps and about 165,000 printed cartographies from various eras, most of them not even inventoried, in 150 of the 916 libraries contacted.

The cataloguing courses
From the survey carried out so far, a systematic fact emerges: the documents are only minimally catalogued, most of them on paper cards, and for the remaining majority only a partial inventory was found. For this reason, the Atlas Veneto project deemed it necessary to deal immediately with the training of librarians, producing in May 2013, with regional funding, a first cataloguing course focused on Great War cartographic materials on the occasion of the national celebrations. The courses organised together with the Italian Library Association, Veneto section, have continued over the years, meeting the growing interest of librarians. In 2018, the Italian National Archival Association also asked to include cataloguing courses according to the Atlas Veneto protocol in its training programme.

The 2019-2020 survey campaign
The second phase of Atlas Veneto was launched in December 2018 with the memorandum of understanding between the Veneto Region and the MiBACT Regional Secretariat to extend the census also to manuscript cartography. The importance of continuing the project was fully grasped by the Secretariat, which made it possible to continue the work in order to extend the survey also to archives and libraries that had been excluded from the first survey. In February 2019 the Regional Coordination for Historical Cartography was set up with members from the Regional Secretariat of MiBACT, the Veneto Region and the Veneto and Trentino-Alto Adige Archival and Bibliographic Superintendence, which identified a working group to support the project including, in addition to the aforementioned institutions, Fondazione Benetton and the Veneto sections of the AIB and ANAI. The reconnaissance campaign has been underway since early 2019.