Retrodigitization and Completion of the Archive of adult educational centres program brochures

A collaboration between the Research Infrastructures and Organisation and Programme Planning departments at the German Institute for Adult Education (DIE) will see the completion of the digital VHS programme archive. This will preserve the unique collection and make it available online, providing flexible access to VHS programme booklets from 1957 to 2004.

Adult and continuing education programmes are an indispensable foundation for research into adult education, as well as for cultural and social history. Adult education centres are the largest organisations for lifelong learning, offering a diverse range of courses with free, open and unregulated access for the general public. They play a key role as primary providers of adult and continuing education under public responsibility. The programmes offered by these centres are aimed at all sections of the population and provide insight into the educational content and learning objectives offered to different population groups over time.

Programmes reflect contemporary history by incorporating social challenges, technological developments, and educational policy agendas into their content. They also interpret these in various ways in response to identified educational needs and assumed demand. Alternatively, programmes demonstrate how adult education centres engage with discourses and the development of adult education terminology, and how they interpret these within their educational programmes.

How can the academic use of the digital Adult Education Centre programme archive be developed further? What presentation and analysis options are suitable for programme research and research in other disciplines?

Five research questions are to be formulated based on considerations regarding sustainable research designs in programme research. Infrastructure developments will be provided on a pilot basis for these questions. These developments, created using test samples, will then be evaluated by researchers. The aim is to identify infrastructural possibilities to support ambitious research approaches. Links with the DIE's VHS statistics, for instance, could provide solutions.

A compendium of feasibility considerations regarding infrastructures is initially produced through dialogue between the research and infrastructure communities. These could be applied to all digitised programmes in the medium term. The infrastructures developed to answer the five research questions can be reused as Scientific Use Files.

The aim of RetroPro 2 is to complete the digital archive of the German Institute for Adult Education's (DIE) VHS programme archive. Programmes from the sample VHS tapes, for which digital archives have existed since 2004, will be fully retrodigitised and made accessible through cataloguing. The digitisation and cataloguing processes are not ends in themselves, but are intended to facilitate research.

Digitised versions of the VHS programmes enable significant analysis, not least because of the VHS's status as the most important adult education institution. Digital access will facilitate this research and dissemination activities will further stimulate it. In this context, the scope of the research should be broadened to include other disciplines with an interest in cultural and contemporary history, not just adult education. RetroPro 2 aims to develop exemplary infrastructure solutions for 'programme research' by collaborating with experts in programme research and infrastructure. This will enable new analytical methods for the first time.

These methods will be developed as part of the DIE's own research programme, 'Organisation and Programme Planning', and within the Programme Research Expert Group.

Further details on experts specialising in programme research.