In 1982 the Society decided to begin work on this project, which had been envisaged in its founding statute. The aim was to list and describe all extant manuscripts of Dante interest, beginning with those of the Commedia. On the textual side, this list was to present a carefully chosen selection of critical loci for each manuscript; it was also to provide an internal and external description of each codex, in a standard form devised for the Society by Professor Luciana Mosiici and Professor Giancarlo Savino (who described it in a paper on the occasion of the International Congress for the Society’s Centenary in 1988).
Over the years the project has developed thanks to a fruitful collaboration with IBM Semea and thanks to the use of new computer technologies. The original intention to record only selected loci has evolved into the more ambitious project of transcribing integrally the manuscripts, in accordance with guide-lines which are being fine-tuned as the work proceeds, and of storing the transcriptions in a computerised database.
The Census project thus has two different aims, a scholarly and philological aim and a practical one: to use computer technology to preserve the material in non-perishable electronic form, in order to make it available to users on the internet in the website www.danteonline.it.
The description of the codex will be present in the new series "Dante's Manuscripts and Manuscripts of Dante Interest".

Drawing up a Bibliography of Dante publications has always been one of the tasks of the “Società Dantesca” (Dantean Society), first as a bibliographic review present in each number of “Studi Danteschi” (Dantean Studies), then as from 1984 and until 1999 as a project co-financed by the Ministry for University and Scientific and Technological Research and published as a monographic volume of the same magazine. As from 2000 the Bibliography is available as a database online, present not only on this site but also on the scientific one of the Society: www.danteonline.it.
The database gathers all the published papers about Dante as from 1972 to the present day, it is updated twice a year (in July and in December), and enables research per author, title, series, publisher, place of publishing and subject; it also enters chapters of monographic volumes or collections of single authors as a headword and each schedule is provided with key words which permit a more accurate research; for example it is possible to search as per subject on a single canto of the Comedy, or it is possible to indicate as a key word the marking of a manuscript and obtain the relevant bibliography.

The reorganization and cataloguing of the Society's Historical Archive, which consists of about 6.000 items important for reconstructing the social and administrative life of the Society, is a project that the Society started in settember 2002 at its expense.

The website has been planned by the Società Dantesca Italiana, which guarantees its scientific quality, promoted by Ente Cassa di Risparmio of Florence and IBM Italy, and carried out by Infogroup S.p.a.; it is available online by June 2000 to the following url www.danteonline.it.