HHB announces that the digitization of the Leplaysian family monographs has now started, beginning with the HHB record #1: the monograph authored by Ubaldino Peruzzi - future ministry within the first Italian government -, describing a family of sharecroppers living in Bagno a Ripoli, near Florence.
Pierre Guillaume Frédéric Le Play (1805-1882) was an engineer, whose notoriety is due to his interest for sociology and for his studies of living conditions all over the world. He developed a specific research method, consisting in a very detailed scheme for the collection of household level data. Basing on this successful scheme, he and his followers published 164 monographs, collected in his two main works: Les Ouvriers Européens and Les Ouvriers des Deux Mondes. Their import has now taken off, and they will be soon part of the HHB Database.