What Are the Boundaries of Archival Context? The SIASFI Project and the Online Guide to the Florence State Archives, Italy

Creating archival descriptions in a digital environment and communicating across the Internet is not the same as traditional paper-based communication. As in other cultural domains, in archival description the medium influences the structure and content of information. The SIASFI Project and the Online Guide to the State Archives of Florence are good examples of these transformations. The article presents the main features of the Online Guide and discusses the theoretical and methodological assumptions underlying its conceptual model which are rooted in the international descriptive standards, "ISAD(G)" and "ISAAR (CPF)," as well as in a complex view of what archival context is. (Contains 9 figures and 9 notes.)