Quadernini Project Digitizes 100-Year-Old School Notebooks from 26 Countries

The Quadernini project, launched ten years ago by the cultural association Quaderni Aperti, collects and digitizes vintage school notebooks from the late 19th century to the present. The Facebook page, with nearly 12,000 likes, shares scans of these notebooks, offering glimpses into childhood, education, and societal change across Italy and beyond. A notable entry from a 10-year-old girl in Clusone, Bergamo, dated 1944, describes trying on her grandmother's clothes and a Garibaldi uniform. The project has gathered 400 notebooks from 26 countries including Argentina, Australia, Austria, Belgium, Belarus, Brazil, Canada, China, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Ghana, Japan, India, Indonesia, Latvia, Pakistan, Portugal, Russia, Slovenia, Spain, Tunisia, Turkey, the UK, and the US. A crowdfunding campaign on Produzionidalbasso aims to raise €15,000 by 2019 for transcription, digitization, translation, website creation, international promotion, and shipping costs. Benefits include posters, backpacks, pencil cases, and new notebooks with vintage covers. The archive, called Exercise Books Archive, will be the first digital archive of school notebooks worldwide. The project also sparked debate over a 1941 Alsatian girl's songbook featuring Nazi symbols and the song 'Heilig Deutschland' in Sütterlin script.