The section for history, ethnology and the Slovene language was founded in 1951 as a part of the NŠK - Slovene National Library of the Studies and is a centre for collecting non-literary historical material about the Slovene community in Italy. Its three main activities are the collecting of archival and other photographic documentation, the collecting of museum material and research activity.

The documentary collections cover the second part of the nineteenth and the twentieth century. They include the archival material of the Slovene cultural, economic and political institutions, an archive about the Resistance Movement and the Liberation Movement, a school system archive, a biography archive, an oral history archive and a photographic archive with about 300.000 pictures.

The museum collection is of ethnological type and is centred on material culture.

The research activity is centred on history, ethnography, linguistics and archaeology. The topics of the historical research are social and political history with emphasis on the issues of nationalism, fascism, antifascism and the Liberation Movement, the history of economic and cultural institutions, the minority issues, the history of the school system and emigration. The ethnology team is studying the material and spiritual culture and everyday life of the Slovene population. In the linguistic field, the studies are centred on the local Slovene toponomastic in the minority area. The archaeology team focuses on archaeological topography.

Visitors can photocopy and reproduce the photographic material.