Conducts research and collects data on the global history of labour, workers, and labour relations

Archives

Archives and archival finding aids may be searched in the catalogue. Descriptions of Dutch archives are in Dutch, the other ones are in English. IISH’s leading archives are fully available to view online via the Institute’s catalogue

Overviews

Consultation

If you wish to consult a collection in the Reading Room, please read our rules first.

Donors and owners of material on loan to the Institute may have imposed 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, see the brief descriptions of the relevant archives.

Request for permission

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 by completing the form Restricted Access Archives. For more information please contact the Reading Room: ask@iisg.nl.

Temporarily unavailable

Some collections may be temporarily not available for consultation. This can occur if documents are being reinventorised, receiving conservation treatment, being digitized, due to shortage of stack space, or renovation.
See the list of temporarily unavailable collections.
For more information on availability of collections please contact the reading room staff, ask@iisg.nl.

Other means of access

Two printed guides to the archives are available from the Institute:

  • Mies Campfens, De Nederlandse archieven van het Internationaal Instituut voor Sociale Geschiedenis te Amsterdam, 2nd ed, Amsterdam 1989, 504 p.
  • Jaap Haag and Atie van der Horst (eds), Guide to the International Archives and Collections at the IISH, Amsterdam, Amsterdam 1999, 608 p.