Biographical material of the press archive
Amongst other things, in its collection of cuttings, the press archive of the Herder Institute has over 200,000 dossiers in total on personalities in public life in Poland, the Czech Republic and Slovakia (Czechoslovakia until 1992), as well as the Baltic States. In addition to articles on and by these people, it also contains official appointment announcements, obituaries, the presentation of prizes and publication announcements.
These materials represent a unique stock of sources in contemporary political history and modern social and economic history. In order for them to be better accessed, the most productive dossiers in both quality and quantity - about one quarter of the total number - are recorded using 16 descriptors, thus providing in addition to the identification of the person, information on their most important functions in different areas of public life, and the type and quantity of the associated cuttings.
So far, descriptions of around 17,000 of these dossiers on Polish personalities have been published in book form (Biographical materials from the press of East Central Europe after 1945; A. Poland, Volumes 1-4 [A-Z]) and presented together with almost 4,000 descriptions from the dossiers of Estonian personalities in a Database of Biographical Materials, which is currently being created.