Catholic Institute, Studia Slovenica
Studia Slovenica (SSL) is the archive with a special library operating within the Catholic Institute that has been founded by the Archdiocese of Ljubljana. SSL keeps a unique and invaluable archival material about the most prominent Slovenian diaspora and members of the Slovenian national community living beyond the state border (Gregorij Rožman, Miha Krek, Ciril Žebot, Ljubo Sirc, etc.); it also holds a unique and invaluable archival and library material about numerous Slovenian cultural and ecclesiastical organizations in Europe, North America, Latin America and Australia. The entire archival collection includes 180 personal and thematic collections of 260 meters length. SSL library material comprises more than 50,000 units (monographs in various languages and periodicals published by Slovenian emigrants and members of the Slovenian national minority living outside the border). In 2002, the Ministry of Culture declared the SSL archive collection as cultural monument; In 2005 (second edition in 2006), the Archives of the Republic of Slovenia published a guide to SSL archives that have been systematized by Andreja Klasinc Škofljanec. It could be argued that SSL with the associated special library unit represents the largest and systematically the best arranged archive on Slovenian diaspora, especially its Catholic-oriented part.
The merit for collecting the material goes to the Slovenian-American economist Janez Arnež (1923–2021), who in 1957 founded the Institute Studia Slovenica in Washington D.C. He devoted most of his life's mission to preserve the archival and library heritage of nationally conscious Slovenes in the world. Janez Arnež published 32 monographs on Slovenian history and Slovenian (political) emigration, he collected and edited monographs, periodicals, archival and other culturally important material. In 1991, he transferred all the material collected until then to Slovenia, and in 2012, it was permanently moved to the ownership of the Catholic Institute. Studia Slovenica is unique in the Slovenian and international environment, and it is still expanding.
Between 2021 and 2027, the Catholic Institute will perform digitization (capture, storage, description, publication) of the written heritage of the SSL archive.
Financial support for the project is provided by the Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Slovenia. The selection of archival material for digitization complies with the principles of record preservation and with public interest; it comprises items that are probably the most interesting for scientific research work, and are consequently subject to physical decay. Selected digitized documents from the Studia Slovenica archival collection will be published during the implementation of the project and supplemented, if necessary.