DIE has an extensive archive of adult education programs that has been continuously and comprehensively collected since 1957.

Since the institute was founded as the Pedagogical Office of the DVV (PAS/DVV, now DIE) in 1957, the collection of program schedules has been one of its long-term tasks. The creation of the archive of adult education program schedules was included in the institute's first statutes, alongside the creation of an organisational archive – known as the statutes archive – the archive for adult education estates and the library.

The collection and the program evaluations were carried out on behalf of the German Adult Education Association, and from 1962 onwards, the collection for the area of the old FRG can be said to be relatively complete. The institute's collection was particularly enriched by the transfer of historical program holdings from the Frankfurt-based Bund für Volksbildung (Federation for Adult Education), where Carl Tesch, through his functions in the Adult Education Association, had also created his own collection, which included programs from as early as 1948 and, in individual cases, such as the programs of the adult education centres in Düsseldorf and Breslau, also from the Weimar Republic. A solid relationship developed between the institute and the donations, which were maintained until 2004. In addition, after 1989, the adult education centres in the new federal states were added, with the programs of the Leipzig Adult Education Centre being available back to 1948. According to K. Pehl, the following development of the participating adult education centres can be seen in a 10-year rhythm:

• 1946 –27
• 1956 – 200
• 1966 – 288 (of 1148)
• 1976 – 472 (of 944)
• 1986 – 506 (of 856)
• 1996 – 700 (of 1010)
• (PEHL 1998, 18/19)

The inventory of the archive of written program announcements maintained until 2004 can be found here.

In 2004, the print archive was closed with the proviso that, as a first step, a selection of adult education programs would be digitally

For this purpose, a sample of 50 institutions was compiled from the current 967 adult education centres, representing a broad spectrum of adult education work in Germany. Small and large, municipal and district adult education centres, as well as special-purpose associations, local and regional adult education centres, and adult education centres from each federal state were included in the archive. With the exception of Bremen and Hamburg, each state is represented by at least two institutions; for the larger federal states, the number of adult education centres included is based on the population. Within the federal states, adult education centres with different service volumes (measured in teaching hours) and located in different types of districts were selected. The concept of this expansion stage was described in the article ‘New service for program research. The DIE's “Online Archive of Continuing Education Programs” (Heuer, Hülsmann & Reichart, 2008). The data sets can be viewed here: Adult Education Centre Program Archive

Literature

• Pehl, K. (1998). Using the adult education program archive, In S. Nolda, K. Pehl & H. Tietgens (1998). Program analyses.  Adult education programs as an object of research, p. 9-60. Frankfurt a. M.
• Heuer, K. , K. Hülsmann & E. Reichart (2008). New service for program research. The DIE's ‘Online Archive of Continuing Education Programs’. In DIE-Journal, (4), p.46-49.
• Heuer, K. (2012). The DIE program archive.

Contact
Dr. Elke C. Bongartz