Marien van der Heijden retires after 41 years

That Thursday in 1984 was not his first visit to the IISG.  He had been there the year before, when he was an art history student researching political posters. 'That was still at the previous location on Kabelweg. It was a horrible building.' But that didn’t matter to Marien. 'When I came to the iconographic department and saw the material, I was immediately sold. It tied in perfectly with the things I found beautiful and important.'

Assigned as a recognized conscientious objector to military service

Looking for a place to do his alternative military service, Marien managed to find one at the IISG. His first job at the Institute was cataloguing the Dutch poster collection, using a typewriter. ‘It was great fun, because it really appealed to my imagination. It was a crash course in Dutch social and political history. What’s more, it was very satisfying work: you have this pile that keeps getting smaller.’

After the year and a half of alternative military service Marien decides to stay on at the IISG. He helps with collecting, puts together exhibitions and becomes involved in something completely new: computers and the accompanying automation. At first, his work consists mainly of retyping lists.

‘The big and exciting things came when the internet was invented. It may sound primitive now, but digitizing and making the catalogue and archives available online were a quantum leap forward.’

Digitisation

Marien enjoyed working with computers, was skilled at it and became head of the new Digital Projects department. 'I really liked it,' he says. The department was always on the move, and we were constantly inventing new things. It was also where the first databases and digital publications were created, such as the TSEG and the strike database.  The IISG was forward-thinking and had a vision that gave us a leading edge for a while. At one point, our website was even among the top ten most visited websites in the Netherlands.’

Eight years later, when the Digital Projects department was absorbed into other departments, Marien worked on various projects, including the 'Centrale project', which was responsible for digitizing old collections gathered from the institute's foundation until 1940, including the Marx archive.

Marien as Head of Collection Development.

During the IISG's reorganisation in the 2010s, Marien applied for the position of Head of the new department of Collection Development. He continued in this role until his retirement.

‘In this role, I had the privilege of supporting highly motivated, committed and knowledgeable people. My role varied from project to project. With some projects, I remained at a distance, while with others, such as those in Sudan and Ethiopia, I was more directly involved. I found it very special to witness the dedication of the people there. Despite the unsafe political situation and the fact that they are often untrained archivists, they work extremely hard to take care of their archives, simply because they believe it is necessary.'

In January, Marien handed over to Maissan, but, like most former IISG staff, he will continue to visit the institute regularly.

‘I will be working on describing posters from the Chinese collections. Posters have always been a recurring theme for me, and after all these years, I will continue with that. This time, however, I will be using a computer, OCR tools and, hopefully, Linked Data instead of a typewriter.’