Representatives from more than thirty archives from Israel , Europe , and North America that specialize in Holocaust-related materials participated in the International Shoah Archivists Working Forum organized by the Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany (Claims Conference) and held in New York City March 23-25, 2004 .

International Cooperation

The participants in the Forum agree on the importance and desirability of cooperating in order to preserve, collect, and provide access to the documentation of the Holocaust. The Forum should be seen as a major first step towards a series of specific international projects and activities among Holocaust-related archives.

Digitization

Digitization can be used to support internal archival matters such as preservation and cataloging. Different archives have different views regarding whether to digitize archives, how much to digitize, and what to digitize. It is noted that the State Archives of Israel, Yad Vashem, and other Israeli institutions are digitizing their holdings, and the Centre de Documentation Juive Contemporaine and many other institutions elsewhere in the world are moving in the same direction. The pooling of resources is desirable in this regard. Consideration should be given to replicating the Digital Encoding Center at Yad Vashem sponsored by the Claims Conference in additional locations such as the United States Holocaust Museum or, alternatively, to facilitating the ability to move records to such services. Digitization should be viewed separately from the question of placement of archival documents on the Internet.

Acquisitions

The identification and acquisition/microfilming of additional documentation of the Holocaust should remain a major priority. In this regard, the following specific steps should be taken:

a) Information should be exchanged concerning collections in danger or that should be duplicated.

b) Conservation of specific documents of particularly great historical significance should be supported.

c) A place on the Forum web site should be created for information on what has been accomplished to date. [2004]

d) A listserv should be created to discuss current acquisition/microfilming projects and plans. [2004]

e) Local institutions should be encouraged to identify and acquire/copy original materials held by survivors and communities.

f) The Claims Conference and other funding agencies should take an affirmative stance in regard to the sharing of materials among archival institutions. Application forms should request plans to share materials and the rationale for any restrictions in this regard. Willingness to share materials, within legal parameters, should be a strong consideration in the Claims Conference allocations process.

Cataloging

Cataloging should be a major priority in order to improve access to Holocaust documentation. In this regard, the following specific steps should be taken:

a) The Cataloging Working Group of the Forum should be augmented and its communications and work facilitated.

b) A list of archival institutions for which the documentation of the Holocaust is a substantial part of their mission should be compiled (institutions participating in the Forum plus similar institutions that were not present). Consideration should be given to expansion of the guide presented on the web site of the Centre de Documentation Juive Contemporaine. [2004]

c) Descriptions of collections should be compiled by all relevant institutions using the eleven categories presented by Yad Vashem and the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum at the Forum. The Cataloging Working Group will prepare a memo providing preparation instructions for the descriptive categories. Descriptions of collections will be placed on the password-protected web site of the Forum for the moment. When fully prepared, the descriptions of collections will be made public and links created to them. Consideration will be given to the creation of search mechanisms. [2005]

d) Those institutions that have developed thesauri or relevant lists or software (e.g., Yad Vashem's geographic database) should make them available on the Forum web site or otherwise so that the other archives can suggest additions and corrections. Doing so should be helpful to cataloging and to the continuation of discussions concerning the desirability of a unified thesaurus.

Accessibility and the Internet

Although there is consensus on the general desirability of making the documentation of the Holocaust accessible and on the use of the Internet for finding aids and descriptions of collections, there are differences of opinion as to whether this should be done through mass uploading of documents to the Internet. It is possible for digitized documents to be shared with other archives or with researchers without necessarily making them available over the Internet, and it is possible to limit access to documents that are made available over the Internet. In order for documents to be used for educational purposes, a selection in consultation with educators is considered preferable to mass uploading. The Internet is being used more and more for scholarly research, but it is not yet clear what effects mass uploading of Holocaust documentation to the Internet will have on scholarship.

The participants in the Forum express their gratitude to the Claims Conference and the Steering Committee of the Forum for organizing and sponsoring a productive first meeting.