The collection of programs at the Austrian Adult Education Archives (ÖVA) dates back to 1889. The regional focus is on Vienna, with programs from other federal states and, to a lesser extent, other countries. Institutionally, the adult education centres (Volkshochschulen) are by far the most prevalent, but programs from other adult and continuing education institutions are also available.

The first adult education event in Vienna for which an exact date is recorded was a lecture on the topic ‘The People’s Reading and the People's Education Association’, which the secretary of the Vienna People's Education Association held at the Old City Hall on 16 December 1887. To be precise, such detailed knowledge from the early years of the association-based popular education work does not come from programs, but from annual reports, in this case from the ‘Report on Previous Activity’ of the ‘General Lower Austrian Popular Education Association; Vienna and Surrounding Area Branch’ submitted in 1889.

The production of printed announcements of educational events then began very soon, with a certain degree of continuity of lecturing activities and the consolidation of educational associations. These programs appeared in a wide variety of forms: mostly as separate program booklets, over longer periods of time in the form of newsletters or other periodicals, sometimes additionally, sometimes exclusively in the form of posters. The formats and typographies are highly diverse, with no pictorial elements or plenty of colourful images, the cheapest types of paper as well as glossy products, highlighting the name of the institution or, more recently, the more or less successful ‘logos’ – elements that provide insights into the changes in the cultures of representation in adult education.

In order to make the adult education programs accessible for content analysis, the Austrian Adult Education Archives had to decide whether to create either full-text searchable scans or a structured database. At the time of the decision, there was much more to be said for the second solution, which, thanks in particular to the evaluation work of Edith Hahn, a long-standing project collaborator, has led to remarkable results: More than a quarter of a million courses and lectures have been recorded in the THESEUS database, including all courses, lectures, excursions, symposia, ‘academies’ and other events offered by the Viennese adult education centre between 1887 and 1960/61.

The initial impetus came in 2002 with the project ‘Displaced Education - Exodus 1934-1938. Computerised recording of all lecturers, course instructors and functionaries of the Viennese adult education centres 1900-1938’, in the course of which the names of the lecturers, their topics (fields), academic disciplines were systematically recorded, together with the most precise data possible on their temporal and local-institutional activities within the framework of the three Viennese adult education institutions at the time.

From July 2011, these data sets can also be searched online. In addition to the programs of courses and events, the source base of this first online database includes annual reports, periodicals, the directories of popular university lectures, reports from specialist groups, internal communications and work plans. For a small proportion of these data sets, information on attendance figures can be found in other sources (activity reports, statistics, etc.). Further analyses of the educational programs are only possible in conjunction with these data, because without knowledge of the participation, it is possible to deduce the intentions of the providers, but not their realisation. In other words, what can be found in the programs does not indicate what actually took place. Complex statistical analyses of the educational process will be possible when the data from the course administration systems of the adult education centres are available in the Austrian Adult Education Archives.

Contact

Austrian Adult Education Archives
Kürschnergasse 9
1210 Vienna Austria
Voice: +43 1 89 174 - 156110
Fax: +43 1 89 174 - 356110
E-Mail: office.archiv@vhs.at

http://archiv.vhs.at/vhsarchiv-home.html

Wiener Volkshochschulen GmbH
Registered office: Vienna | FN 304196y | Vienna Commercial Court