Search results

Starting from the status quo, the paper outlines perspectives and challenges for the connection and interlinking of digitised and digital archival data. The following topics are addressed: Where are fields of action and what are the means of archives? Which functional and technical requirements are to be considered, and what is the role of portal infrastructures linking together various different institutions?

Considering needs of users and general framework conditions, the paper examines new approaches emerging in Germany. It outlines recent projects and considerations aiming to improve services and visibility of archives within the national data infrastructure in Germany.

Cross-connections are no new phenomenon, but change their appearance significantly in a digital context. In this respect, both smaller and bigger archives profit from participation in larger digital networks. Furthermore, archives need to keep in mind to reflect the quality of their digital (meta)data regularly and to offer or join systems that functionally and technically support cross-connection and interlinking of data.

The paper endeavours to show the importance of digital cross-connections and the role of portal infrastructures for visibility, online-distribution and use of digital archival metadata and data.

The purpose of this paper is to show how state socialist countries used soft power to improve their image in the West and advocate “the socialist way of life” in the context of the Cold War.

The author argues from a cultural history perspective that underlines transfers and entanglements among the two camps during the Cold War. The study is based on primary and secondary sources such as automotive periodicals and archival material from the German Bundesarchiv.

International fairs turned in the late 1950s into a new “battlefield” of the Cold War. The Soviet Union and its allies were celebrating at these meetings, important medial victories, laying the grounds for a state socialist consumer society. For the first time, Western audiences were realizing that irrespective of certain stylistic differences, consumer goods and particularly cars were not that different on the other side of the Iron Curtain. However, ideological bias and manufacturing flaws prevented them from being fully acknowledged by the Western side.

Cold War research mainly focused on bipolar confrontation and the high-level decision-making process. This study is part of a recent trend in historiography to reassess the history of the Cold War, focusing on the multi-layered interactions between the two camps. It also shows that consumption and material well-being were important topics for understanding the dynamics and the flow of ideas through the Iron Curtain.