We are moving - but We Shall Not Be Moved

The office, collections and archives are currently being relocated. We hope to reopen for the public by mid-November. Net, mail and phone communication might be temporarily interrupted. Please accept our apologies.

A Guided Tour via YouTube

(German version - but have a look, anyway)

Video by Camillo Meinhart ext. Link with special thanks to Marianne Veit

Welcome in the Documentary Archive!

We introduce ourselves

Well, agreed, our full name is not really cute: "Documentary Archive for the History of Radio Communication and Electronic Media". But it explains exactly who we are and what we do, our aims and ambitions.
Our strictly nonprofit volunteer institute with headquarters in Vienna, Austria, was founded more than twenty years ago - at that time as International Foundation QSL Collection. It is supported by individuals, amateur radio societies, broadcasters and broadcast listeners, archives, historians, publishers, enterprises etc. on all continents. A board oversees our collections and archives, and controls all projects.

Our archives and collections
We collect whatever relates to the history of radio (with the sole exception of “hardware”: we are not a radio museum!) With seven million objects filed, we are the world’s biggest organization of its kind, and the only one with such a wealth of interdisciplinary collections:
- The Documentary Unit is a unique and gigantic global data base of letters, public and private records, research files and similar archival material, supplemented by a photo collection and a library of books and magazines. - The Oskar Czeija Remembrance Funds, named after the founder of Austrian broadcasting, is devoted entirely to the history of Austrian radio.
- The audio-visual archives consist of thousands of films, videos, private and broadcast tapes and discs – and downloads of the most perishable medium, the internet. With daily updates of broadcast footage it it is always up-to-date
- The collection of QSL cards, awards, and logbooks, covers the entire era from pioneer days to today. - The YASME-Colvins collection of almost a million cards is the biggest individual amateur radio collection ofall times.

We do not buy or sell but rely entirely on donations. Individuals have given us treasures unearthed at home, donated parts of their private collections, or, as we prefer, bequeathed material to us during their lifetime. We receive bequests, exchange items of which we have multiple exemplars with other archives etc. All projects and overheads are financed entirely by charitable donations. Whatever we keep is available to the public, and everybody is welcome, at any time, to contact us for an appointment.

read on >>

German now - English soon

We have just finished the relaunch of our web presentation in German, with the English pages to follow, step by step. There is a whole lot more to find and enjoy on our German pages, and we invite you to take a look at them even if you do not speak German. - We urgently need native speakers to volunteer in editing and/or translating our German content.

Site Navigation

An ovverview

Home General information / Guided Tour / Who we are and what we do / Team, members and sponsors / Membership application (available soon) / Links to related sites (available soon) / Glossary (to follow later) / Reviews of interesting books and publications in English (just started) / Projects (available soon)
Amateur Radio
Rare DXCC entities / History of amateur radio / Prominent personalities / Research files
Broadcast
Research files / lists of publications, sound and video files available in the public section or for members only / Oskar Czeija-Gedächtnisfonds (History of Austrian Radio - German only)
Virtual Museum
Picture galleries / Virtual Art Museum / Rarissima and curiosities
Archive
Have and wanted lists / information about our data bases / lists of books, magazines, documents, reference sources of all kinds available in the public section or for members only
Members All the material available for members only (membership application: 'Join us!' in the Home portal section)

How to navigate

• Highlighted Country Flags in the top task bar: indicating in which languages the article/s is/are available.
  
• Every section has a "home page", introducing its contents - to choose click on the blue vertical task bar.
  
• Articles are split into chapters with basic information. For additional text / pictures / sound or audio files click at read on
  
• Pictures: Enlarge them with a mouse click and read the full caption.
  
• Picture galleries: Click and browse
  
• :Let the mouse hover over the word unterpunktetes to open the glossary (under construction)
  
• PDF-files are available for downloads. Free Adobe Reader: ext. Link
  
• Many Tables and lists may be downloaded as Excel file
  
• Search engine (Magnifying glass in the top bar): The first line (underlinded) leads to the section or article page, the following lines lead directly to the search results word by word (yellow marker)
  
• Contact us (Top task bar): available from every page of our web site
  
• Update marker: Date of last update