Budapest, 27 June 1997 (RFE/RL) - The Open Society Archives (OSA) are moving this weekend to a new location at the Central European University in Budapest.
Established in 1995 by American philanthropist of Hungarian origin George Soros, the archives are now part of a network of charitable and educational institutions funded by Soros. The archives were open to the general public on 15 March 1996.
OSA's holdings include reports of the Research Institute of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty. It also include the Russian, Polish and Hungarian Samizdat Publications, research files of the Index on Censorship and a small but growing collection of audio-visual materials from organizations in the Soros Foundations Network in the region.
The OSA Library includes the book and periodical collections of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty and a collection on archival publications. The library is gradually being integrated into the library of the Central European University.
OSA maintains a series of Reference Information Papers on selected topics. Most of these publications are in English, but there are also materials in all of the main Central and Eastern Europe languages. The library also includes newspapers and journals, both in the original format and on microfilm.
Member of the Paris based International Council on Archives, the OSA are currently involved in a project to collect records on war damages in Yugoslavia.
The Yugoslav collection consists mainly of video-tapes that the archives receives from independent televisions from Belgrade, Zagreb and Sarajevo. The collection has yet to be filed before it is made available for the general public.