Personal memories are preserved in various types of documents (books of accounts, chronicles, memoirs, autobiographies, diaries, letters or correspondence) and provide family, property, financial, agronomic and historical data among others. Memoirs are found in archives: personal and heritage, or in private homes, etc… The areas where there is more data are related to the city, on the one hand, guilds, gentlemen, ... and the rural world, on the other, in close relationship with the “mas” or the house in the Pyrenees, and even monastic spaces. This has led to the suggestion that there is a close relationship between the traditional system of Old Catalonia and the proliferation of memoirs until the late modern age. This collection of data, inventoried and processed, can give valuable information about the history of mentalities, political history or the history of identities. This field of research is growing in Europe and Catalonia is one of the areas with higher data wealth.
The Universitat Autònoma of Barcelona, through the Manuscrits Research Group (Department of Modern and Contemporary History) and the Humanities Library will try to structure this "personal memory file" at European level, establishing links with Italy, France and England, and seeking a national and international projection of Catalonia's history through these sources, published and disseminated. So far, the database focus between the end of the Middle Ages and the nineteenth century, leaving for later more contemporary documents.
http://www.memoriapersonal.eu/