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��Labour’s Memory: Insights into a collaborative project on digitising, processing and giving�access to blue collar union sources

Thijs van Leeuwen / Andreas Marquet

54th Annual Conference of the International

Association of Labour History Institutions (IALHI)

Paris, 2024-09-12

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What is the goal? Give online access to Annual Reports/Reports on Activities and Financial Reports of Unions from a Global to a Local Level, enhance with DH tools

For whom? Academics (Labour Historians), Labour Unions and their members� also for a more general public interested in labour history

Who is involved? Archivists, Labour Historians, Computational Linguists, Image Processing Experts, Information Management Experts, and Focus Group Users

Which archives Swedish Labour Movement’s Archive and Library, the Popular Movements’

are involved? Archive in Uppsala, the Archiv of Social Democracy and the International Institute of Social History.

Who is funding �the project? Riksbankens Jubileumsfond

How long does it take? 01.01.2022-31.12.2024; Go Live 1/2025

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IFTU – International Federation of Trade Unions

ICFTU – International Confederation of Free Trade Unions

PSI - Public Services International

EI - Education International

ISETU - The International Secretariat of Entertainment Trade Unions

PTTI - Postal, Telegraph and Telephone International

IFJ - International Federation of Journalists

ILF - International Landworkers Federation

FIM - International Federation of Musicians

ITGLWF - International Textile, Garment and Leather Workers' Federation

ITF - International Transport Workers Federation

IUL - International Union of Food, Agricultural, Hotel, Restaurant, Catering, Tobacco and Allied Workers' Associations

BWI - Building- and Woodworkers International

FIET - International Federation of Commercial, Clerical, Professional and Technical Employees

IMF - International Metalworkers' Federation

FIA - International Federation of Actors

IGF - International Graphical Federation

Swedish local unions (ARBARK)

Uppsala Unions (Local Clubs, Sections)

Activity and Financial Reports:

From Global to Local

Some numbers:

Covered time span: 1880-2020

ca. 900 organisations

amount of pages (still growing):

110.000 AdsD

40.000 FAC

8.000 IISH

70.000 (out of 500.000) ARBARK

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Digitisation of Reports (handwritten and printed)

Processing

Metadata Collation

Importing into LM Portal

Long Term Preservation (not part of the project)

What‘s going on?

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Some challenges

  • Curating the reports
    • Making choices
    • Good metadata
    • Unions merging all the time
  • Long-term continuation of the platform

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How to participate?

  1. Find and digitise reports on activities and finances from your union collections

  • Make them accessible on your own website/platform/portal

  • Give access to the reports via IIIF-API

  • Prepare metadata along the project-schema (based on Dublin Core)

  • Take care of long term preservation of your digital objects

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