The files of the Central Committee Secretariat and government Ministries, as well as the various state committees and agencies, contain a virtually endless supply of official documents, memoranda for the record, various studies and surveys, personal correspondence, informal notes, etc. The information in these archives is not only important in its own right, however. It provides an essential yard stick against which the personal recollections of party and government officials and other elites of the former GDR can be compared and evaluated. For a number of reasons, many scholars, at least in the United States, are drawing heavily on written and oral opinion and recollection from such sources. Recollections are also particularly sensitive to the vagaries of time and personality, however, and the value of the resultant information depends in large extent on a determination of the accuracy and objectivity of the source.
Space is restricted.
Virtually all documentation must be reviewed in the original. There is no computer equipment, all processes must be accomplished by hand. The most significant detraction to exploitation is the lack of a subject index to the files. Existing indices are generally arranged chronologically by organization, office or activity, and a researcher can make only a more, or less, educated guess at which files would be relevant to a particular topic. In light of the above, the German Government should devote significant resources to facilitate scholarly exploitation of these archives.