 Interview
with Giancarlo Gonizzi (G.G.) –
Person-in-charge of Barilla Historical Archives
– 26th February 2001 (updated 15th September
2004)
by Maria
Chiara Corazza (M.C.C.)
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Reconstructing an archives
The archives today
Classifying a wide variety of records
The archives collects, preserves and communicates
Business culture organizations
Since 1987, the perspective and
the philosophy of the Historical
Archives have also partly changed.
Originally they were created to reconstruct the
history of the business – the aim being to
supply all the elements necessary to write the firm’s
history, which was in fact redacted in 1994. Then,
they gradually evolved into group archives,
because with the passing of time other firms, now
brands, were added to Barilla’s original
brand. 
The
first one was Mulino Bianco, which has
always been part of Barilla; then Voiello
followed – a historical and very appreciated
southern pasta factory – then Panem,
specialized in the production of fresh bread, afterwards
Tre Marie – for specialty holiday
products like the Christmas spiced cake and the
dove-shaped Easter cake – Pavesi
–a historical leading brand of cookies of
the fifties and the sixties – and lately Wasa,
the well-known crisp bread from Northern Europe.
All this has led to setting up (inside the historical
archives) spaces and archives for every single trademark
of the group, trying to recover as much as possible
in the various headquarters of the different companies
that are now part of the Barilla group, arranging,
re-arranging and sometimes acquiring materials that
were lost. For instance, in the summer of 2000,
we acquired an important photographic record
group from a photographer’s in Novara.
This collection consists of over five hundred glass
plates and hundreds of modern pictures, taken for
Pavesi over a period of forty years.
These actions - sometimes of great importance and
sometimes as small as the purchase of a catalogue
on the antique market, the purchase of a poster
etc. – are now carried out on a regular basis,
precisely because they come out of the awareness
of the initial loss of the archives. In
fact, we have established a mechanism that will
prevent future losses; we call it automatic
input of the historical archives regarding
all new and current products.
It
works like this: upon agreement with a supplier,
all the press and public relations material is sent
in triplicate to the historical archives. Therefore,
agencies, publishers and printing offices are required
by contract to send a copy of what is produced to
the historical archives. The archives may receive
some duplication; however, there is far less risk
of an information gap about current daily production.
In the past, we have held courses at a secretarial
level to increase awareness of
those who handle document administration in the
various offices, so that files, materials and dossiers
are sent to the archives after processing.
Nowadays Barilla has a centralized fiscal
archives for records that must be kept
for ten years as required by Italian law. This is
automatized and functions rather differently from
the historical archives. 
It
includes a centre of documentation
that closely studies problems that require more
immediate solutions on a daily operating level.
Lastly, it has historical archives with the task
of receiving, ordering and keeping all the records
produced inside the firm – in some cases,
the entire document, as with the archives of the
chairmanship and of the managing director. Otherwise,
records undergo a selection before being ordered
and filed. All the material coming to the historical
archives, with the exception of the archives of
the chairmanship and of the managing director, is
generally accessible to the public
depending on its time of arrival. The time gap between
the realization of a project and the arrival of
the documents to the archives takes from three
to five years.
M.C.C.: Could you explain the
connection between semi-current and current archives?
G.G.:
There are current archives dealing
with active records in the different offices that
created them. The semi-current archives,
once existing physically, has been transformed into
the group’s fiscal archives.
Therefore, semi-active documents become part of
the historical archives, which selects the material
for preservation or destruction according to specific
standards.
The only office operating on its own is the personnel
department, which is obliged to keep all the documents
concerning the personnel for at least sixty or seventy
years. This kind of material comes here only after
fifty years; so at the moment we have a complete
series regarding personnel from the post-war period
up to the fifties.
The use of illustrations kindly granted by Archivio storico Barilla © Barilla G. & R. F.lli Spa
