EHRI

European Holocaust Research Infrastructure

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 Obiettivo del progetto (Objective)

'In the year the world commemorates the 65th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz, a European Holocaust Research Infrastructure (EHRI) project sets out to support research into the Holocaust. EHRI’s main objective is to support the European Holocaust research community and help initiate new levels of collaborative research through the development of innovative methodologies, research guides and user-driven transnational access to research infrastructures and services. To this end, EHRI proposes to design and implement a Virtual Research Environment offering online access to a wide variety of disparate and dispersed key Holocaust archival materials and to a number of online tools to work with them. Building on integrating activities undertaken over the past decades by the 19 partners in the consortium and a large network of associate partners, EHRI sets out to transform the data available for Holocaust research around Europe and elsewhere into a cohesive corpus of resources. EHRI will first and foremost strengthen the existing clusters of excellence in Holocaust research, but also serve as a 'best practice' model for other archival or humanities projects as well as for more encompassing follow-up projects in contemporary history. Although EHRI is primarily geared towards the needs of scholarly communities, the online availability and open access to reliable and properly contextualized Holocaust material is relevant and important for the larger public well beyond scholarly communities, as its research topic is deeply rooted in the development of European societies. European support and a European approach are essential to achieve an integral and comprehensive approach to the history of the Holocaust as a European phenomenon.'

Introduzione (Teaser)

An EU project established a new infrastructure for Holocaust research, combining texts from hundreds of organisations into an easily used online resource. The project also fosters collaboration through a Virtual Research Environment and placements.

Descrizione progetto (Article)

Materials of interest to Holocaust researchers are often fragmented, and widely dispersed across an unusually large number of institutions by historical research standards. Accessing the information is complicated, in some cases impossible, and very time consuming.

Addressing such needs is the EU-funded 'European Holocaust research infrastructure' (http://www.ehri-project.eu (EHRI)) project. The 19-member consortium, including two Israeli organisations, runs from October 2010 to March 2015. The aim is to support the Holocaust research community by unifying online access to the various resources by 2015. Additionally, the project will encourage collaborative research via a Virtual Research Environment, and by fostering on-site researcher placements.

Work began with establishing user requirements. The project processed 277 responses to its online survey, and conducted 22 in-depth interviews. Additionally, the group assessed the collections of over 1780 relevant institutions. Substantial quantities of new material, especially from Eastern Europe have been added to the collection. Enabling the incorporation, the team developed a data-model based on international standards and a meta-data registry. The development work included research tools, a multi-lingual thesaurus and an online research environment. As a result, a fully-functioning prototype system has been completed and testing is underway.

The guide to the collection was updated including all necessary data and documents. Work began on improving the Jewish Communities Research Guide, including establishing the methodology.

The project achieved significant progress towards its networking goals. Using tools such as the website, social media, and newsletters, EHRI has become embedded within the relevant stakeholder communities. Furthermore, the group co-organised a major networking event in conjunction with three major scholarly infrastructural organisations.

Other highlights included training programmes and articulation of relevant privacy issues. The team facilitated transnational access to existing infrastructures for Holocaust research. Via the project's administration, a panel of experts selected 22 researchers for placement at leading subject-related institutions.

The outcome of EHRI will be an integrated infrastructure, supporting access to dispersed Holocaust materials and facilitating research into the subject. Aside from making materials available, the project also helped to consolidate the research community.