The Direzione generale per gli archivi (General Doctorate for Archives) funded a National wide project concerning the archives of the Architects.
The aim of the project is to assure the preservation and the knowledge of these sources and to provide access to them: to take a census of the archives, that is to identify and shortly describe them; to make detailed inventories of some, according priorities based on their importance or on their being at risk; to have high fidelity reproductions of the drawings, in order to allow a better preservation of the originals and a better access to them through web-accessible databases; to restore the damaged documents (something that is especially difficult for the characteristic qualities of the different support of the drawings); and, at last, to find repositories, supporting in many cases their acquisition by the State Archives, considering the frequent risk of export abroad for these archives.
The same aim underlines the agreement signed in October 2001 between the Direzione generale per gli Archivi (General Directorate for Archives) and the Direzione generale per l'Architettura e l'Arte contemporanee (Generale Directorate for Contemporary Art and Architecture) to estabilish a national plan to preserve the documents on the architecture in 900's., then followed by others like the ones with Accademia di Mendrisio della Svizzera italiana , (2002, renewed in 2012), the Fondazione MAXXI (2012), the D.G. PaBAAC and the Assciazione Archivi di architettura (2013).

In particular, specific projects of archives census have been realized by the following Soprintendenze archivistiche: Abruzzo, Basilicata, Campania, Emilia-Romagna, Friuli-Venezia Giulia, Lazio, Liguria, Lombardia, Marche, Piemonte e Valle d'Aosta, Sicilia, Toscana, Umbria e Veneto.

The results of the projects are gathered in the SIUSA thematic path, that has been created as a general connectiing point of the project.

As a top of the census campains, some Soprintendenze have worked at the publication of regional thematic Guides:

• Guida agli archivi privati di architettura di Roma e del Lazio, a cura di M. Guccione, D. Pesce E. Reale Roma 1^a ed 1999, ultima ed. 2007
• "Gli archivi di architettura in Lombardia. Censimento delle fonti" a cura di L. Ciagà direzione scientifica SA Lombardia e Politecnico Milano, 2003 ultima ed. 2012
• Guida agli archivi di architetti ed ingegneri del Novecento in Toscana, a cura di E. Insabato e C. Ghelli, Firenze 2007
• L'architettura negli archivi. Guida agli archivi di architettura nelle Marche, a cura di A. Alici e M. Tosti Croce 2011
• L'architettura sulla carta. Archivi di architettura in Abruzzo, a cura di F. Toraldo, M.T. Ranalli, R. Dante 2013

The results of the census can be consulted also in the Sistema archivistico nazionale, in particolar in the thematic Archivi degli architetti on line since 2012.

This portal is a work in progress. The General Directorate of Archives plans to put on line an increasing number of finding aids related to architecture archival sources in the future.