We receive many questions concerning the possibilities of depositing and donating collections or archives. We are grateful that people consider our institute when it comes to depositing material. We try to reply to your message as soon as possible, however keep in mind that this might take some time, we try to answer them within 14 days. Thank you for your patience.
We cannot include all the material offered in our collection. Processing offers is a labour and resource intensive process and the processing capacity of the IISH is limited. The IISH sets several conditions to determine whether an offer is eligible for inclusion in the collection.
- The IISH focusses on collections, archives and other material related to the broad themes of labour, labour relations, economy and social movements with an emancipatory character. If another institution is a more suited for the material in question, the staff member in question will try to refer the donor to the most suited repository.
- We can only accept unique or rare material (i.e. material that is not available in other archival repositories or (university) libraries). You can check the availability of material through catalogues of Worldcat, Europeana and to check if IISH already has something in the collection. That means, for example, that most publications already held by the IISH or other institutions are not acquired.
Take into consideration different ways to spell proper names or transliterations from different scripts when searching in catalogues.
- In order to ensure a swift handling of your offer, please include as much information as is relevant for determining the nature and value of the material in question. For example, the size (in linear meters), what topics it covers, what type of materials (correspondence, financial administration, photographs, manuscripts, reports), the state of the material or in case of digital files, the carrier and type of formats.
If the collection is suitable for the IISH, we can have a conversation, preferably by e-mail first, to determine what the material is about and whether the IISH can play a role.
In such a conversation, we will explore the possibilities, how the material can be handed over, whether it should be a donation or a loan, and whether the material can be made publicly available or comes with restrictions.
We invite individuals and organisations that provide material to contribute to its arrangement or digitisation. This can result in a more extensive form of collaboration (collaborative archiving) where the provider has an important say in how the material is arranged and made available. Sometimes we will advise a provider to submit the material elsewhere or keep it for themselves.
