With the final end of the mental hospital in 1996, it became very urgent to preserve the archives of these institutes. For this reason, the Direzione generale per gli archivi (General Directorate for Archives) promoted the project meaningfully entitled "Papers to be bound", to make a census put in order and improve the documents, mainly the medical ones, kept in the archives of the former Italian mental hospitals.
For some of them a data base of the case files is provided, containing the personal data, the socio-economic data and the medical data of the patients using the software ArcanaMente, purposely prepared to allow access to this fundamental historical source.
The project received financial support by the Presidenza del Consiglio del Ministri (Presidency of the Council of Ministers). The mental hospital Santa Maria della Pietà in Rome was the pilot experience of this project and la Soprintendenza archivistica (Supervision Agency) per il Lazio coordinated the activities for the setting of the software ArcanaMente.
The project on national level is carried out by a working group joined by Alexandra Kolega, (S.A. Lazio), Micaela Procaccia (D. G. Archivi), Francesca Ciaccio (S.A. Umbria), Michela Sessa (S.A.Campania), Pompeo Martelli (Centro studi e ricerche S. Maria della Pietà di Roma), Leonardo Musci (Società Memoria scrl).

The data base is continually updated, following the development of the project.