Posted on 23 July 2014
218 interview recordings produced as part of the volume "The European Commission 1973-1986, History and Memories of an Institution" have been deposited at the Historical Archives of the European Union (HAEU) and are now available to research.
To present the collections online, the Oral History database was completely re-designed and aligned with the HAEU’s archival database platform. Also, all interviews are now retrievable using the search engine in use for archival holdings since early-2014. This allows for a unique viewing of results within institutional fonds, private archives, archival collections and oral history programmes.
About 150 of the total 218 interviews that have recently been deposited are now available online in the new Oral History database in transcriptions. Short audio extracts of about 100 interviews are also available on the new online platform. The complete set of transcripts and audio recordings can be consulted on site at Villa Salviati, in line with the rules laid down by the interviewees and the consortium of 22 professors who conducted the interviews. Some of the material is subject to prior authorisation via email request to the HAEU.
The deposit concerning the years 1973 to 1986 is an outstanding contribution to the history of the European Commission and a valuable source for researchers studying the significance and roots of this Institution. The programme is a continuation of 113 interviews produced by a team of international historians for the 1st volume “The European Commission 1958-1973. History and Memories of an Institution”, published by the Secretariat General of the European Commission in 2007.
Today, as result of 15 years of acquisition and collecting audio materials and transcriptions on the history of European construction, the HAEU has set up an impressive collection with almost 600 interviews available for research in digital format either online or on-site in the reading room of the HAEU.
The importance of oral history programmes for research is shown by the access statistics of this online collection. Almost 37.000 interviews were downloaded (2013) and the complete HAEU oral history collections received 250.000 visits (2012).
Link to the Oral History database.