Measuring to improve: proposals for data collection and analysis in Italian archives

The essay examines the role of measurement and data analysis in the evaluation of archival services, highlighting delays, resistance and critical issues in comparison with other fields such as libraries and museums. Drawing on international standards and guidelines, it presents the recovery and reworking of historical data relating to the reading room services of the State Archives of Florence and Venice, which led to the development of a prototype web application for calculating metrics and generating tables and charts. The paper discusses in detail the limitations identified in the legacy data and proposes several measures to improve future data collection, advocating the integration of data gathering and analysis functionalities within the Sala Studio platform, which is gradually intended to manage user services for all Italian State Archives.