"AfZ Online Archives“ is the moniker of a new virtual information area from the ETH Archives of Contemporary History (1)(2). The realisation of this portal means the realisation of a vision for Daniel Nerlich, deputy head archivist. "With a mouse click we want to make as many original documents as possible accessible, set within their historical contexts," he says. Interested parties shall be able to access to the documentation centre independent of time or place, and obtain the wished for information as easily as possible.

From poster to documentary

Primarily the collection comprises source material on Swiss and general contemporary history stretching from the interwar years until today. The thematic emphases of the archives lie in the areas of World War II and the Holocaust, the economic policy as well as the cold war and inland security policies. The documentation centres "Jewish Contemporary History", "Economy and Contemporary History" as well as the "Collection on Switzerland and the Cold War" are responsible for securing and opening-up of the respective archives.

Some of the highlights of the already digitised holdings are the roughly 500,000 newspaper articles on Switzerland's economic policy from 1943 to 1974, sound recordings of 140 colloquia with contemporary witnesses since 1973, as well as a poster collection from the Swiss Society for the Promotion of the Economy that comprises 250 election posters from the 1940s until present times. The AfZ also includes 18 selected and unpublished documentaries from the journalist and photographer Walter Bosshard from the 1930s and 1940s.

Not drowning in a sea of data

"We now want to put all these digitised documents at the service of research," says Daniel Nerlich. As the regulation of Switzerland's copyright laws was currently undergoing revision, they had to proceed step by step, explains the historian. "Certain precautionary measures had already been taken. The digitised posters, for instance, are equipped with a copyright watermark for identification purposes," he adds.

Screenshot from the virtual lecture hall: thanks to the very latest technology valuable document can be studied from home (Picture: ETH Archive for Contemporary History). large

To prevent the users of the online archivs from drowning in a sea of data, the people responsible for the archives turned to innovative technology for the search in their holdings. The so-called "Xylix Retrieval System“ is a probabilistic search engine that systematically sets the term searched for in relation to the number of times it occurs in any given text. Hits can be synchronised with the structure of the holdings, the partition of which is visible on the left of the screen. "We were particularly keen to have a sophisticated search system," says Daniel Nerlich. After all, presenting information in a structured manner was the whole point of any archive.

Young media for old holdings

To put documents pertaining to the past on the internet, Daniel Nerlich and his team therefore turned to the technology of the future. "We work together with young computer scientists, who developed the retrieval system for us," he explains. With this strategy they seem to have hit on the right solution. Because the computer system had already drawn attention to itself before it actually went on-line. Last week those involved in the "AfZ Online Archives“ project were able to present their work at the first "Swiss Innovation Forum“ (3).The forum addresses representatives from economy, education and politics and aims to promote the development of innovation in Switzerland.

Daniel Nerlich hopes that particularly two things will come to pass as a result of the presentation at the Innovation Forum: "Firstly, that the retrieval technology will meet with interest from economy and that the AfZ On-line Archives will be evaluated at ETH as a concept for the collection of digital data within the university's ICT measures." But for the historian the most important point was that future generations would be able to discover treasures from the past. "If we want to reach out to tomorrow's generations we have to do it using their forms of media." Moreover, as he goes on to say, a digitalisation of collections provides further added value: valuable documents that are threatened by decay can be preserved for posterity in this way.