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All types of collections can be accessed through the IISH catalogue.
At Collections you will find an overview of the materials kept by the IISH.
See also the general descriptions of collections of NEHA, and Persmuseum.
Library
Through the IISH catalogue you can search for books, brochures, magazines, newspapers, music, sound, and documentation.
Journal articles and chapters in books are not accessible. You need to know in which magazine / newspaper information as possible and has stood the journal request to see if there is anything in it.
Online tools are the Labour History Serials Service with tables of contents of journals in the field of "labor history", the database ViVa Women's History in Professional Journals. Other databases can only be consulted in the Reading Room.
Guidance for searching single documents that have no relationship to a archive, such as leaflets, pamphlets, flyers, sheet music, stencils.
Archive
Through the IISH catalogue you can search for archival material. There is also an index of archives where you can browse through alphabetical lists of names of archives or browse the archival collections by country. The documents themselves can only be consulted in the Reading Room.
The archival collections are available for research purposes and most of the collections are available without restrictions.
Donors and owners of material on loan to the Institute may, however, impose certain restrictions about accessing, copying, and publishing these collections or parts of collections, including a requirement for expressly requesting permission of the donor or owner. Restricted access to archives may also be necessary to protect the privacy of individuals or because of the physical condition of the material in question.
To find out if access to a collection is limited, read the introduction to the inventory for a specific collection.
Access restricted
For permission to consult a collection with limited access, please submit a written request in advance stating the nature of your study. This may be done using the Restricted Access Archives form.
For more information please contact the Reading Room, ask@iisg.nl.
Access closed
Access to some archives are completely closed. Usually this involves an archive of which the donor or owner of material on loan to the Institute doesn’t give permission to consult this collection. It also might be necessary to protect the privacy of individuals or because the poor physical condition of the documents.
To find out if access to a collection is closed, read the introduction to the inventory for a specific collection
In such cases it's no use to ask permission to consult the collection.
Visual documents
Through the IISH catalogue you can search for posters, photographs, drawings, buttons, videos and movies.
An overview of used keywords can be found in the thesaurus, see Image & Sound Collections.
Digitized images (low resolution scans) of materials are displayed in the catalogue.
Original material can be consulted by appointment only.
Digital collections
The Institute is working on setting up a digital repository. For the duration of the project, the services of digital collections is limited. Digital material can be consulted by appointment only. Please send an e-mail to ask@iisg.nl.
Requesting
All materials are stored in closed-access stacks and cannot be browsed by the public. Request forms must be filled in to request documents.
No requests will be handled after 4 p.m. Your requests can be submitted at the desk. Employees of this desk will deliver the desired materials quickly to your seat in the Reading Room.
Staff can set a limit to the number of requests received from a single individual at one time.
For reasons of conservation some collections are only available on microfilms and microfiches. Reading, printing, and scanning equipment is available.
Some collections may be temporarily not available for consultation. This can occur if documents are is being reinventorised, receiving conservation treatment, being digitized, or due to shortage of stack space. An overview.
Reservations
Prior to your visit it is possible to request materials by e-mail. Send an e-mail (at least 24 hours before your visit) to ask@iisg.nl containing the required data. You can repeat this request up to 3 items.
Your e-mail must contain the following information:
For books: your name, title, author, call number, and date of your visit.
For magazines: your name, title, call number, year(s), and date of your visit.
For documents: your name, name of the archive, inventory numbers, and date of your visit.
Depositing
When you're not finished with requested materials by the end of the day, you can reserve the items up to 3 weeks. Please hand in the materials for your next visit at the circulation desk, they will be stored behind the circulation desk and are directly available on your next visit.
The Institute is a reference library which means the library material must be available to everyone. Therefore, no material can be borrowed.
International interlibrary loan
The Institute provides libraries in other countries that are members of WorldCat Resource Sharing (SHARES partners only) books and periodicals, only in the form of (digital) copies (up to 50 copies).