BA / MA digital files

[Piet Duits]

Nick (and others), I spend the last days in the BA-MA. Off all the items I ordered, I only got 3/4 of them. The others were all send away for future digitalisation or repairs. This results in me going home again, 1 day too short. It is very frustrating to find out the items you have ordered months in advance are not there.

[Jan-Hendrik]

I feel with you...what a f**ck!


Beste Grüße

Jan-Hendrik

[steve248]

It happens with all National Archives. UK government agencies declassify files and then recall them a year or more later because something has happened. They don't redact them (at least I do not think they do) but then forget to send them back until a researcher makes a request via the Archive. Files get lost. You never know until you arrive at the archive to find they do not have some of the file(s) you requested on-line.
In times past, files out for photocopying and not available were another bugbear.
Probably still the same in German archives - at UK National Archives just take your camera and snap away so no photocopying costs.

[Mori]

@steve248: at TNA, the opposite also happens. I once received documents with a sticker claiming they were only to be released at a later year.

[steve248]

Yes, Mori, that happens too. Especially with files about named individuals. The agencies do not bother finding whether someone has died so the file is kept until a researcher provides a DOD and then released. Happens a lot in HS 9/ - files of individuals employed by the "old" Special Operations Executive (SOE).

[Mori]

As TH just reminded us, the temporaer gesperrte Bestaende list for Freiburg includes a lot of RH 2 OKH files, and these are being slowly worked through; including a number of oversized map/diagram files at the bottom of RH 2. There are other map files being added for OKW and Heer collections, Luftwaffe is slowly ticking up. I don't see a clear set of Schwerpunkte in the out-for-scanning list.

Regarding RH2: over the last 4 months, hundreds of additional items have been added to Invenio, mostly in the numbering above RH2/2400. Also, many oversized items (maps etc.) are added.

There still exists occastional gaps in the numbering below RH/2000 and I suspect these overlooked folders will never be added...

[nickterry]

@BundesarchivD updates: 4.5.23: 367.549 files; 6.5.23: 367.901 files = +352 files digitised last Thursday and Friday. No Freiburg updates, some from Koblenz and Berlin-Lichterfelde, incl. Ludwig Losacker's BDC file.
https://twitter.com/historiannick/statu ... 6926134275

[nickterry]

@BundesarchivD updates: 4.5.23: 367.549 files; 6.5.23: 367.901 files = +352 files digitised last Thursday and Friday. No Freiburg updates, some from Koblenz and Berlin-Lichterfelde, incl. Ludwig Losacker's BDC file.
https://twitter.com/historiannick/statu ... 6926134275

Small update this morning.
11.5.23 - 368.013 files
13.5.23 - 368.204 files.
Berlin-Lichterfelde and Freiburg, also some (catalogued but privacy-restricted) files added at Ludwigsburg.
https://twitter.com/historiannick/statu ... 9851894784

Over the past few weeks, Berlin-Lichterfelde has got up to nine files of the Propaganda Ministry conference protocols (R 55) for 1939-spring 1941, and added various files for the railways especially in western Europe to R 5 and the Anhang I, II Sammlung Kreidler (now up to 10 files) and Sarter collections. I usually assume someone asked/paid for these smaller orders, but others can benefit from these tidbits.

The ALLPROZ 3 Nuremberg defence lawyer collection at Koblenz keeps on ticking up a few files every update. They're now up to 430 digitised out of 1396 files in the Bestand. Invenio lists 2857 files for other trial collections at Koblenz, while Nachlaesse held at Koblenz show perhaps less signs of movement.

[Urmel]

Thanks, very helpful! Working my way through PERS 6 now.

[Mori]

Thanks, very helpful! Working my way through PERS 6 now.

The top 1000 items from PERS 6 are available as bulk download there: http://wwiidigitalarchives.org/a3356-pe ... y-officers

[Urmel]

Ah thanks! I am just looking for about half a dozen specific individuals, so probably easier to use Invenio.

[nickterry]

Biggest @BundesarchivD update for a good while: 18.5.23 - 368.365 files; 20.5.23 - 377.862 files = +9.467 files, but totally unclear which collections were boosted. A few hundred added to 'OKH' keyword search, for example, most other terms the same as before. ??????
https://twitter.com/historiannick/statu ... 7951886337

Almost all other keywords that might normally show incremental growth for a small update remained the same. I wondered if this was a housekeeping change to the system, i.e. which files were counted as digitised, since last year there were some updates to keyword searches that did not show up in the headline count, but did not see if some previously barred files were now accessible.

One good thing from tweeting: Piet Duits replied to one of my updates, noting he had problems with a file he had ordered at Freiburg that was out for digitisation, and the Bundesarchiv Twitter team noticed this in their mentions, so replied to him asking for more information. But whether this means they clarify this mystery is another matter - likely they would not know, although in principle they should be able to find out.

[Mihai Pica]

BA has just updated the files "locked" between July-December 2023

http://www.bundesarchiv.de/DE/Navigatio ... aende.html

[Piet Duits]

nice they updated their list, but it still isn't complete. I am missing several of the documents I ordered earlier this month.

[diciassette2000]

Basically it's a copy with additions of the one valid between March and June 2023.... most likely between March and June 2023 they did other things????
All the best
Maurizio