Portuguese Asian Digital Archive Network
PADAN

The Portuguese Asian Digital Archives Network (PADAN) is a project launched by the Macau Scientific and Cultural Centre (CCCM) to identify and cooperate with partner-institutions, such as repositories, libraries and archives, that contain important documents related to Portuguese overseas history.

The project originated from the realization that, although Portugal was the first European country to commence direct relations with South Asian and East Asian countries about 500 years ago, original documents in Portuguese and other languages are scattered widely, in archives and libraries in Europe, Asia and the Americas, and in various conditions of accessibility.

PADAN functions as a portal to the catalogue of other institutions, filtering thousands — and sometimes millions — of items to provide results relevant to the relations of lusophone countries and Asia. The aim is to facilitate the search for and identification of relevant materials for scholars, researchers, and interested members of the public within this vast documentary resource.

We invite all those interested to visit the network and to stay tuned to PADAN, as our list of partner-institutions grows and so to does our database network. Soon, we hope to be providing catalogues from partner-institutions in Brazil, China, Japan, among others.

As a public service, under the overall supervision of the Ministry for Education, Science and Innovation of the Portuguese Republic, and generously supported by the Foundation for Science and Technology (FCT), PADAN is an open-access service-provider that is free of charge.

Currently, users may access the catalogue of a number of institutions, including the National Library of Portugal, the National Archive of Torre do Tombo, the Arquivo Histórico Ultramarino, the University of Macau, and of course the CCCM Library. Have a good search!