On the 22nd of October 2014, Judith Levin and Veerle Vanden Daelen presented the current working version of the EHRI portal to a group of researchers for the first time. The participants of the EHRI workshop on Early Attempts at the Historical Documentation of the Holocaust (Prague, 20-23 October 2014) formed this first group of pioneers. They were able to have a look at the EHRI directory of over 1,850 repositories holding Holocaust-related archival sources, and some 3,000 manually added collection descriptions. Needless to say, the bulk of the collection descriptions will only become visible in a later stage, when the IT-imported information will be added to this work-in-progress. Nevertheless, EHRI already wanted to collect feedback on what is available and hear what the target audience’s first impressions were. 

Presentation of the portal

After a first general presentation of the portal, which introduced all the available elements (country reports, repository, collection, authority and thesaurus descriptions), the researchers were asked to verify whether the repositories they used for their own presentations to the workshop (or their research in general) were available in the EHRI portal. If not, they could add them on the spot.  

Positively surprised

To our delight, the EHRI repository directory was not only perceived as good, the researchers were even positively surprised to find repositories that they did not expect to find. Another very encouraging idea was voiced by a researcher working with archives in which preservation is currently endangered because of lack of funding. Finding descriptions of such archives in the EHRI portal was not only seen as an important piece of information for researchers, but it also gave hope that the EHRI portal can help raise social and political awareness to support the institutions in their task to preserve these historical documents, and save them from further decay.

Share knowledge and ideas

This group only saw a glimpse of the collection descriptions which will become available on the EHRI portal in March 2015. Even by the time of the launch, EHRI will not be able to present a complete picture. The work will have to be continued. A serious boost to all our efforts was that this research group showed great enthusiasm towards actively joining the EHRI community and share their knowledge and ideas about the vast amount of information EHRI will continue to add in the future.  

Photo: Judith Levin (left) and Veerle Vanden Daelen present the portal. Photo by Irina Rebrova.