We are happy to announce that, as from today, the European Holocaust Research Infrastructure (EHRI) will host an enhanced version of the International Research Portal for Records Related to Nazi-era Cultural Property as part of the suite of Holocaust-related research resources available through the EHRI website.

Since 2010, The U.S. National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) has hosted the International Research Portal for Records Related to Nazi-Era Cultural Property (IRP2) on its website. This portal provides researchers with links to archival materials at participating institutions, consisting of descriptions of records and, in many cases, digital images of the records that relate to cultural property that was stolen, looted, seized, forcibly sold, or otherwise lost during the Nazi era.   The International Research Portal has been an important resource for provenance, claims, and academic researchers to locate relevant archival materials across institutions.

Over the past few years, the Digital Curation Innovation Center in the College of Information Studies at the University of Maryland, College Park, has undertaken a project to develop a capability to search across many of the resources available through the Portal.

Enhanced with this new capability, the Portal will now be hosted by EHRI. It will maintain all the content and links provided on the version on NARA’s website, but will also include the enhanced capability to search simultaneously across several of the Portal resources that previously had to be accessed individually.  This additional capability will greatly improve the ability of researchers to access archival materials across multiple institutions in a timely fashion while conducting cross-institutional research. A short article outlining the new search features can be found here.

NARA will continue to partner with EHRI to ensure the ongoing success of the International Research Portal.

Read more Exploring the Renovated International Research Portal