An EHRI Workshop in Bad Arolsen: Comparative Studies on Finding Aids as Genre

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Tuesday, 29 January, 2013

Between 17 and 21 December 2012 EHRI partner the International Tracing Service hosted a workshop convened within the framework of the Work Package for Standards and Guidelines of the EHRI project. Chaired by the Dutch archival scientist Peter Horsman, ten participants from Israel, the UK, Germany and the Netherlands pondered over and discussed issues of comparative research on finding aids as products ('artefacts') of representing archives. In this context, the attendants resumed the thread of the current discussion in archival science interpreting finding aids as a 'genre'.

Focusing on comparative case studies on selected finding aids of the Dutch Institute for War, Holocaust and Genocide Studies (NIOD-KNAW), the Israeli remembrance authority Yad Vashem and the International Tracing Service (ITS) in Germany, the debates brought to light clear differences with regard to the amount of historical background information, the amount of information on the description process and with regard to the differentiation of the field types for the registration of data and the description of archival units.

Read more at its-arolsen.org.

Picture: International Tracing Service, Bad Arolsen.