Romanian, U.S. Institutions Agree to Digitize RFE Romanian Recordings
The audio archives of one of Radio Free Europe’s most storied broadcast services, the Romanian Service, will be digitized and preserved for future generations, under a partnership agreement signed by RFE/RL, the Hoover Institution, and the Institute for the Investigation of Communist Crimes and the Memory of the Romanian Exile (IICCMER)
Signed on April 11, 2012, the agreement calls for the three organizations to work together to digitize a total of 3,350 studio recordings, building on lessons learned during pilot projects carried out by the same institutions. The project is being funded by IICCMER, Hoover, and contributions from the Romanian public. IICCMER will receive copies of the digitized files for its archives in Bucharest. Actual digitization is being carried out at the Hoover Institution Archives at Stanford University, where Radio Free Europe’s archives are on deposit.
The Hoover Archives have to date digitized 415 of the recordings, a selection of which are available on the RFE/RL web site. RFE/RL earlier recovered and digitized a rare trove of transmitter log tapes from the period of October-November 1956 that were preserved at the Federal German Archives in Koblenz (the “Koblenz project”); IICCMER created a detailed finding aid of the Romanian broadcasts for those weeks of the Hungarian Revolution. The finding aid is available at Hoover and IICCMER, while selected recordings with descriptions in English were included in an exhibition “Voices of Freedom: Radio Free Europe in the Cold War Era” held in Bucharest in March 2012.
The digitization project will continue for several years, with results made available for interested researchers and public at the headquarters of IICCMER and the Hoover Institution Archives and selected recordings will be accessible online on their websites. A copy of the entire digitized collection of RFE Romanian Service recordings will also be held at the National Archives of Romania.
Please contact A. Ross Johnson, advisor to the Hoover Institution’s RFE/RL Archive Project for more information about the digitization project.
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To learn more about the “Koblenz Project”, visit:
http://www.iiccmer.ro/en/press/press_releases/agreement_between_iiccmre_and_rfe/
http://www.rferl.org/content/off_mic_ross_johnson_hungarian_revolution/2209996.html
For more information about the “Voices of Freedom: Radio Free Europe in the Cold War Era” exhibition, see:
http://www.crimelecomunismului.ro/ro/evenimente/expozitii/expozitii_2012/
http://www.crimelecomunismului.ro/pdf/ro/voices_of_freedom_lista.pdf
http://www.crimelecomunismului.ro/pdf/ro/voices_of_freedom_brosura.pdf