The History Archives were set up in 1972 with the aim of organising activities to preserve artistic heritage and intervene in urban planning. The Archives have been running since 1982, having been restructured in 1981 into two branches — the Urban Planning Archives Commission and the Architecture and History Archives-Commission — which formed part of a broader service called Activities and Culture. The Architecture and History Archives are responsible for research and the dissemination of historical information in the form of conferences, cross-referenced cataloguing of public archives, drawing plans of buildings and complexes of architectural interest, etc. In 1989, all the archives and the library were brought together to form the Documentation Centre. In recent years, the History Archives of the Tarragona Branch have consolidated their documentary holdings in the Documentation Centre as a permanent resource for the general public. Using the basic principles of archives management — collection, storage, organisation, dissemination and making the documentation accessible to the public — the COAC’s Tarragona Archives have undertaken a detailed, computerised description and classification of their documents for optimum ease of recovery of information by researchers.