On April 9th, 2021, the University Library Centre of Padua accepted the donation of Alberto Lonigo, great nephew of Achille De Zigno, consisting of De Zigno’s complete archive. The archive was transferred to the Geosciences Library where many of the volumes from De Zigno’s library were already kept.

Material

The documentary material consists of 6 binders and 17 volumes, which cover about one metre length.
There are also 56 printed documents, received as a part of the donation, which were kept together with the documents of the archive.

The archive contains:

• 38 diplomas that De Zigno received as a member or as a president of important Italian and foreign scientific Institutions;
• 8 field notebooks, where De Zigno recorded the reports of his geological excursions, mostly in Veneto;
• 2 boxes of scientific correspondence consisting of 175 files;
• 1 box containing 11 folders with annotations on different subjects, letters of Italian and foreign Academies, nominations and assignments, notes and letters about the production of the geological map of Italy, administrative documents of his father Marco and other members of his family, documents about different donations he made, and receipts of the donations of the fossil fish of 'Mount Bolca';
• 1 box of publications and some anastatic printed copies that belonged to De Zigno, and other publications about his person;
• 1 folder that collects the correspondence of the mother, Mary Creagh Maguire;
• 14 volumes written by De Zigno where he collects his memoirs from 1878 to January 1892, a short time before his death;
• 2 notebooks with alphabet tabs, containing annotations about places and scholars, organised in alphabetical orders;
• 1 volume of poems of his young age and annotations on different subjects, readings, travel records and short publications.

The inventory

The project to make an accurate inventory of the De Zigno archive started in August 2021. The project aim is not only to preserve the great number of documents, but also to promote the importance of this archive, kept in the Geosciences Library. The work ended in July 2023.
The project consisted in the creation of files with the description of all the documents, and the reorganisation and conservation practices when needed.
The software used for filing the documents is Arianna evolution (Arianna 4).

You can access the archival description online.