Digital Memory Database
What Is It?
Digital Memory Database is our flagship digital output – launching in January 2026.
The platform aims to be a collection of global digital Holocaust memory practice from the 1990s into the future. It provides a database layer of key information about projects to-date. Where organisations have so far given us permission and we have got out to them, it then has an addition archive layer presenting video walkthroughs of digital projects and interviews with those involved in their creation.
Digital Memory Database is not just a database and an archive, but it is designed as a ‘living’ space, in which users can segment recordings, save collections, create presentations for internal training and stakeholder meetings, cite transcripts, perform data visualisations, save their own research notes, create playlists, collaborate with other users, and link out to the projects featured in the database and relevant research sources.
What’s Its Purpose and Who Is It For?
We imagine four core target users:
- Professionals working in Holocaust heritage or education organisations, who want to learn from existing practice rather than ‘starting from scratch’ or ‘reinventing the wheel’ when they initiate a new digital intervention. If this is you, you’ll find the platform useful as you can listen to other’s experiences from initial ideas through funding, production, dissemination, and impact/user feedback; and create collections, segment clips, and produce presentations to convince internal and external stakeholders to support your proposals for future digital work. It can also help you make targeted connect with other organisations doing similar work to you and identify who is telling stories about your historical site, testimonies, or objects through their digital projects.
- Academics, who are studying digital Holocaust memory. If this is you, you can get instant access to walkthroughs of projects to perform low-cost scoping research that would have cost £10,000s in travel otherwise (as many digital projects are offline and site-specific). We hope this helps fund more high-scale research into digital Holocaust memory practice, and research that is more inclusive of more periphery sites, e.g., beyond Germany and the US (which most research into digital Holocaust memory currently focuses on). We are also developing tools that will allow you to discover new things about:
- Practice of digital Holocaust memory, e.g., is there a gendered experience to developing digital Holocaust memory projects? How does the digital Holocaust memory landscape change over time? Are there trends in the types of projects developed at different moments?
- Histories that are told digitally, e.g., who is producing digital stories about where? Do local communities own their own stories, or not? Are we producing a new ‘digital canon’ of historical figures, if so, what informs this and how might this shape historical knowledge of the Holocaust in the future?
We hope too that the platform will provide rich opportunities for teaching and collaboration with students, as it will include the ability to search by keyword, compare conversations on specific topics, search transcripts, compare walkthroughs in side-by-side video players, and create your own presentations.
- Creative and tech professionals, who are embarking in this domain for the first time can predict and learn how to navigate some of the specific sensitivities that shape (digital) Holocaust memory. If this is you, you’ll find that you can segment and collect useful elements from interviews and walkthroughs, see thumbnails of projects to get a quick sense of what’s already out there, and create playlists from your collected content for a rapid, but nevertheless deep dive into the field.
- Funders, who are currently supporting or want to support digital Holocaust memory projects. If this is you, you’ll be able to quickly jump to the parts of interviews that discuss ‘funding’ and hear the types of opportunities and challenges current funding models create for digital development in this field.
How Can You Get Involved?
It is an ever-growing project, and we need you to keep it developing. Like all our work, Digital Memory Database is a community project – it requires contributors and users.
Interested in using it? You can register your interest in early access via our contact form here.
Want your digital projects archived? If you work for a Holocaust memory/ education organisation, please also complete our survey of digital Holocaust memory practice – it includes an invitation to engage with us to have our team record walkthroughs and interviews with you and colleagues.
Follow Our Story So Far…
Since the Lab’s launch in 2024, we have been busy developing the software for the platform, and working with our initial corpus developed during scoping research (2022-24) to develop the discoverability, interactivity and useability of the site.
To date, we have:
- Compiled more than 80 hours of walkthrough and interview data
- Run a series of design meetings
- Planned, approved and implemented the required database fields
- Developed and tested an initial indexing system, influenced by an ‘immanent indexing’ approach (Presner 2024)
- Prepared audio-visual and audio assets
- Produced and checked transcripts
- Mapped more than 350 digital Holocaust memory projects across the world
- Developed a Quality Assurance protocol, and implemented this to input walkthrough and interview assets, and information for database fields
- Built, designed and tested an alpha version of the site
- Led an alpha-testing session with our key user groups in collaboration with iRights.Lab, Germany’s Digital Collective Memory community
- Developed the site from this feedback
- Led a series of beta-testing sessions
You can read more about our journey and approach in the following blogs:
Centralising the Human in Digital Humanities Methods
Indexing the World’s Digital Holocaust Memory Projects
Mapping the World’s Digital Holocaust Memory Projects
Gathering and Preparing Content
For a glimpse of some of the featured organisations and projects, check out our Spotlight blogs here: