Posted on 25 March 2021
The Historical Archives of the European Union (HAEU) publishes a new set of research guides concerning the various audio and visual material present in the institutional and private archival fonds deposited at the HAEU.
A first research guide presents the collection of more than 60,000 photographs, mainly positives on paper from the 1950s to the 1990s, to be found among 86 archival fonds. These images trace the beginnings of the European institutions by documenting conferences, meetings, institutional visits around the world, key personalities, as well as a plethora of educational and scientific projects throughout Europe. These visual records are crucial in recounting the history of the European integration process and offer additional insights into the personal and professional activities of key actors in contemporary European history.
A second research guide sheds light on more than 2247 posters preserved at the HAEU, mainly paper based from the 50’s to the 90’s, emanating from 45 different fonds and collections. The posters promote events, projects and awareness campaigns on social questions, economy, education, culture, research, technology and environmental issues of the European Union. Although the majority of posters do not come from EU institutions but European bodies and private fonds or collections, many were produced by EU Institutions such as the European Commission, the European Parliament or the European Council. The two most relevant collections are the Nicola di Gioia collection with 1045 items, and that produced by the Centre International de Formation Européenne in Italy, composed of 394 items.
A third research guide outlines the audio and video material present in the HAEU holdings. The current collection of more than 9.870 items consists mainly in VHS tapes, CDs, cassettes, BETACAMs and floppy discs, located in 36 different fonds and collections. More than 7,500 audio recordings are also available, including 900 interviews with high-level EU officials and European personalities. The film collection “Werben für Europa”, whose inventory comprises detailed information on over 240 information films on European integration dating from the 1940s to the early 1970s, is a particularly rich digital collection that was deposited by a research team of the University of Hamburg.
These guides, to be updated as new audio-visual items transfers are processed, provides information on the exact number of items in each fonds, the dates on which they were produced, a brief abstract about the content of the items and the dossiers where they are located through hyperlinks to the HAEU database. This initiative is a follow-up to the HAEU assessment, completed in 2020, of its half a million archival files preserved at Villa Salviati to identify audio-recordings and videos present in the institutional and private archival fonds.
Consult the HAEU collection of research guides