The pedagogic museums as a tool for historiographical research. A database for analysis through their presence on the Internet

The study focuses on school museums, a multi-faceted and complex source for historiographical research. Founded in the second half of the 19th century as centres for research about contemporary school and then transformed into repositories of school history, they are today an inexhaustible source of documents and research possibilities. We present a reasoned appraisal of their presence in Europe and their characteristics, using data obtained from their websites, which can be useful for scholars involved in school history, social history and school museums. The aim of the research is to create an advanced database, where multiple search criteria can be combined to provide an additional online tool for historical research, recently studied and evaluated by the European online HOL-History project managed by the University of Macerata. © 2012 eum (Edizioni Università di Macerata, Italy).