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Since 1935 Atria collects the heritage of women and their organisations, as well as actual
information on the position of women and the gender perspective. The Atria collection ‐ with
thousands of books, meters of archives, journals, reports, photographs, movies, oral history
interviews, posters, and objects ‐ is still growing. The focus is on Dutch history and society, but
always seen within an international perspective. 5
We currently have a collection of archives that is 1,3 kilometres long. To make the archival
material available for a broader audience, a growing number of archives is digitized and made
available through the website of Atria, within the limits of our budget and our staff. Images,
photographs, audio visual material and objects very often form a part of the archives that Atria
acquires. Separate acquisition of this kind of material is only done if these sources bring any added
value to the archival collection. Photographs, slides, prints, post cards, flyers and posters, carriers of
sound and audio visual recordings are all included in the category of historical audio visual sources.
Atria acquires these sources on the basis of the following nine criteria:
• The material must be unique;
• It is complementary to other archival sources in Atria’s collection;
• It is authentic;
• Contextual information is available;
• It is applicable to the Netherlands or positions the Netherlands in an international context;
• It has documentary, symbolic or emotional value;
• It is of good quality;
• It has a meaning in a broader context, so that it can be made available for the wider public;
• And preferably: copyright needs to be cleared.
Once accepted for the collection, the material is described and catalogued and made available in
the wider context of the archival collection. Descriptions are to be found in the catalogue on the
website of Atria. Once the copyright has been cleared and the material has been digitized, the digital
image will be available online as well.
Apart from meeting one of these nine criteria, there is another reason for purposely collecting
audio visual sources. Many groups of women don’t archive their history at all: think for instance of
less literate women, women from indigenous cultures in which the oral tradition is more important
than the written historical tradition, women in countries where it is dangerous to archive your life
and thoughts, because of repression, and so on. In forming our archival collection we also need to
safeguard and make visible those groups and developments which are not to be archived in the
traditional way. Their history needs to be documented in another way. If luck is on our side, those
groups do have some photographical documentation. But most of the time, the only way to
document their history is by make a recording of the stories of their lives.
Oral history is a method of scientific historical research that works with spoken (oral) sources. The
method used in the creation of these sources focuses on systematic collecting and on registration of
individual memories through in depth interviews. Very often oral history sources are the side product
of historical or other scientific research. Very often the materials are kept in the personal archives of
the researchers and very rarely are made available for the wider public. As far as Atria is concerned,
interviews of third parties can be very worthwhile to add to the historical collection, for re‐use by
scientists, but also for more general use, to tackle certain issues in society for the general public.
In the last decade, the presence of women’s movements in society became less prominent and
moved to the background of social and political attention. To maintain the achievements and the
history of women and their organisations that made the difference in the emancipation of women in
society, we underline the importance of creating oral history sources ourselves. Developments and