The Finnish Labour Archives collects archival material and oral
history related to the heritage of the Finnish labour movement
and especially heritage of the Social Democratic labour movement. The Finnish Labour Archives is today a well-known research centre
among the researchers. It is the oldest and largest private archives of
national and social movements in Finland. The material housed by the Finnish Labour Archives has grown to occupy five kilometres of shelf space.
It provides a public service to about 2 000 researchers every year.
History and Organisation
The Finnish Labour Archives was founded in 1909 by the
Finnish Social Democratic Party (SDP). Today it is maintained by the
Labour Archives Foundation. The Executive of the SDP nominates the
governors of the foundation for a five-year term. The archives receives subsidies
prescribed by law and private financial donations for its operations.
The archives is run by ten employees and is led by Mr. Esa Lahtinen.
The Finnish Labour Archives is a member of the International Association of Labour History Institutions (IALHI), and of the
labour movement history conference which is organised in Linz, Austria, once
a year. The Archives has a lively cooperation and regular seminars with Scandinavian labour archives.
Collections
The collections of the Finnish Labour Archives
contain documentation on the organisations of Finnish politics, trade unions
and cultural movements. The archives allows historians to study the effect
of the socialist concept on the Finnish working class at many levels: on the grass root level of local organisations, on the level of county as well
as national and international politics.
One third of the collections consists of the archives of the political labour movement. Another third comprises the archives of the trade
union movement, and the rest represents the archives of the working
class cultural organisations, special collections and personal archives.
At the turn of the 20th century the counterculture of the working
class took many forms. The Finnish Labour Archives houses over
3000 local social democratic party branches and over 500 labour
women´s associations. The amount of archives of local labour union
associations has increased to almost 3000. Along with branches of political
parties and trade unions, workers' temperance organisations were
established, as were organisations for women and young people, sports clubs,
choirs, theatres, educational associations, hobby clubs, peace guards, co-operative shops, workers' newspapers, print shops etc. The workers' reaction to
the upheaval in Finnish society at the turn of the century was powerful.
For instance there is material of about 200 cooperative shops and of over
160 labour theatres, choirs and orchestras.
The most research visits and deliveries of documents to the
reading room concern the documents of the Social Democratic Party
(SDP). Customers have access to all levels of the SDP-material that is older
than 15 years.
Special Collections
Civil War 1918 Collection
In addition to academic research much interest has risen among
the genealogical researchers for the Finnish Civil War Collection. Local
labour associations listed the names and the destiny of the dead after the
Civil War. The documents form a collection called the terror-statistics,
which is the most studied part of the Civil War collection.
Oral History
The Commission of Finnish Labour Tradition operates in association with the Finnish Labour Archives. Since 1960 the Commission
has gathered a collection of memoirs and interviews of more than 7
000 veterans in the labour movement. Out of this collection the Commission has published seven anthologies. This collection, amounting more
than 200,000 pages, can be used with the aid of indexes of place names
and contents.
Photographs and Posters
The collection of photographs and posters are of great volume.
The photograph collection includes 350 000 pictures and 5 000 posters.
The archives supply photocopies, copies of photographs and digital
photos by order.
Annual Report of the Finnish Labour Archives in 2007
The year 2007 was a difficult one for the Finnish Labour Archives in several ways. The whole year passed in uncertainty because the space situation of the Archives could not be solved. Well over ten options were taken into consideration over the year but in every case it would have been either too expensive or practically impossible to transform those facilities suitable for archival purposes. At the very end of the year it turned out that the move had been given extra time up until the beginning of 2010. However, the continuing uncertainty more or less paralysed the Archives as most long-term plans had to be put on hold.
The Finnish Labour Archives was visited by thirteen groups during the year, the same number as the previous year. These groups consisted of, for example, students and genealogists. The number of long-distance loans decreased slightly from the previous year (44) but the amount of long-distance loaned material stayed the same (178 units).
During the year, the Finnish Labour Archives received 138 accessions, which was slighty less than during 2006. Over one hundred shelf metres of material came into the Archives during the year.
At the end of 2007 there was over 5,300 shelf metres of archive material. Keeping in mind the pending move some time within the next two years, the amount of material was kept in check with a fairly strict appraisal policy. In addition, there is around 200 shelf metres of, for example, newspaper bindings, about 150 shelf metres of pictures, posters, both sound and video recordings, and about 300 shelf metres for the reference library and storage. There is also 1,000 vacant shelf metres.
During the year, both the organising of the archives and indexing them into the database continued. New or edited catalogues were made for 830 records creators. Twenty-four of these creators consisted of such a large amount of material that they warranted the use of so-called serial catalogues. In total, 454 units of serial catalogues were formed in 2007. By the end of the year, 9,605 records creators had been indexed into the new system. During the process of organising and indexing the number of records creators is always reduced because one records creator may well have operated under various names.
Mikko Kosunen has been primarily responsible for the organising of the archves and he has also worked as the instructor for the project workers and trainees.
Petri Tanskanen has been in charge of microfilming. In 2007, forty rolls of material, such as documents from the Social Democratic Party, were microfilmed. In total, the Finnish Labour Archives contains 1,176 rolls of microfilm. Over half of this is newspaper material.
In 2007, the Commission of Finnish Labour Tradition received a total of 1,461 sheets of memoirs and 328 sheets of additional material from, for example, interviews from sixty-two donors. Ninety-four units of image and sound recordings arrived as well, the largest donations being the recordings from Mr Kalevi Sorsa's archives and Kankaanpää labour organisation. Timo Tigerstedt helped with the transcribing and creating descriptions for the files. Kaiju Rytkönen indexed the tables of contents of the bindings into a database, getting as far as binding #289.
Inquiries concerning the photograph collections stayed exactly on the previous year's level with 188 inquiries. However, the amount of actual photograph copies delivered to customers (1,231 copies) was significantly lower than in the previous years (2006: 3,016, 2005: 1,710). Despite the seeming "collapse" of the number of picture copies delivered, there is no cause for alarm. It has more to do with the situation coming back to normal after a couple of exceptional years.
During the year 2007, Raija Kainulainen digitised and indexed approximately 1,400 photographs and over 300 posters. Archive intern Tiina Lonkainen digitised and catalogued over 800 photographs. The customer service (as it has to do with photographs) was taken care of by Petri Tanskanen and Jani Kaunismäki.
The digitising of sound recordings that began in 2005 continued in 2007. One of the civilian servants, Oskari Nyman, developed the digitising method and managed to digitise most of the audio material from the Commission of Finnish Labour Tradition by the end of 2006. Nyman's work was continued by another civilian servant Atte Juvonen from November 2006 to July 2007. Around 1,800 tapes - or approximately 2,000 hours of material - have been digitised so far.
The digitising of video material that was started in 2006 was continued by civilian servant Lauri Hiltunen starting from August 2007. At the end of 2007, Hiltunen had digitised 116 hours worth of material. As an overview, civilian servant Mikko Järvinen indexed all videos into the inventory and digitised around 400 videos (approx. 280 hours) between March 2006 and February 2007 and Lauri Hiltunen digitised around 270 files (approx. 116 hours) during July-December 2007. Overall, 669 files have been digitised (approx. 396 hours). One must note, however, that with every step of the way, the Archives has had to prioritise certain materials over others. At this early stage only materials considered "important" have been digitised. Petri Tanskanen has been in charge of this project, as well. In matters of content the project was helped by Risto Reuna and technical support was given by Veikko Rytkönen.
In the year 2007, the Finnish Labour Archives also had some co-operation with the movie industry. Scenes from the much-praised movie "Ganes" as well as scenes from the TV drama "Ylikävely" were filmed in the Finnish Labour Archives' facilities.