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The Open Society Archives

The Open Society Archives at CEU (OSA) is an international archive, and a center for research and education. It is committed to collecting, providing open access to, and actively interpreting historic records on communism and the Cold War, as well as human rights movements and violations.

OSA also maintains a permanent archive for those digital records created by CEU and the Soros foundations network.

Dedicated to innovative ways of archiving, and making records as widely available as possible, OSA seeks to define and promote a new, collaborative and distributed digital archival model. Throughout the process of archiving and research, OSI engages its community of researchers in professional dialogue, facilitating a critical approach to its documents.

  • Materials are collected from over 20 countries in 32 languages in all media
  • Many materials are accessible online (e.g., the 1956 Digital Archive, and the Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty Background Reports)
  • OSA operates a Film Library with more than 2,000 fiction and non-fiction items
  • Materials have been used in exhibitions in the Galeria Centralis, the online world of Second Life, in film festivals, and many lectures, workshops and seminars
  • OSA collaborated in the development of Martus, a global tool for human rights information management and distribution
  • OSA was founder of the International Samizdat [Research] Association, a network of people and institutions researching the samizdat phenomenon.

Research facilities

OSA’s Research Room provides up to 10 researchers with an ideal working environment including: two computers with Internet access; free WiFi; two microform readers and printers; three video/DVD stations; and a flatbed scanner and digital camera. Reproduction of audio-visual material is also possible.

Essential reference books, microfilm copies of daily newspapers from Central and Eastern Europe, and a dedicated workstation for the off-line Electronic Archives of the Communist International (Comintern) are available in the Research Room. Requests for archival material from OSA's holdings are processed within 15 minutes.

Opening hours: Monday – Friday, 10:00 a.m. - 5:45 p.m.
E-mail: info [at] osaarchivum [dot] org
Website: www.osaarchivum.org