The European Diaspora Digital Archives (EDDA) digitizes and preserves archival collections of five European diasporas: Lithuanian, Czech, Polish, Hungarian, and Bulgarian. Through a cooperative, women-led initiative, these collections are integrated into a unified public portal that allows researchers, educators, and other community members to access records of immigrant experiences and many more diaspora materials.
Clicking on the link below or on the menu above will bring you to the EDDA database. From here, the tabs at the top of the page can be used to adjust how you search through the collections. Basic Search is the dafault, and Advance Search allows limiting and specifying searches by Title, Record Type, Scope and Content, Subject, and Creator. Browsing Creators or Subjects will display a list of the collections’ creators or topics relating to the collections respectively. Selecting these options will display the collections containing those subjects and creators.
European Diaspora Digital Archives
Collections are held by small, volunteer-run diaspora heritage institutions in the Chicago area. Examples include the Lithuanian Marian Monastery archives maintained by LAP, Czech language school records, Hungarian parish holdings, as well as audiovisual materials from the Polish Highlanders community in Chicago, and recordings from the Polish-American Ref-Ren Theater in Chicago (a Polish émigré troupe led by poet and performer Feliks Konarski). Collections reflect both the local immigrant community’s life and its transnational connections. Chronologically, these collections span from ca. 1880s through the 1980s.
EDDA aims to amplify the voices of Chicago’s Lithuanian, Czech, Polish, Hungarian, and Bulgarian immigrant communities. These groups have remained largely invisible in digital academic and public archives. These collections document immigrant life through letters, parish and organizational records, newspapers, photographs, and oral histories. Together, they capture the everyday experiences of working-class families, faith communities, and women’s organizations whose stories have seldom been preserved or shared beyond local networks. Digitization will transform these endangered materials into an open-access portal linking parallel narratives across communities. By allowing users to explore immigrant experiences across languages, faiths, and generations, the project reveals both the shared and distinctive paths of European diaspora life in America.
Evaluation and Oversight:
Each participating archive, Lithuanian, Czech, Polish, Hungarian, and Bulgarian, is represented by a community member who will review materials before digitization. This participatory process ensures that decisions about inclusion, description, and access are guided by individuals who understand the cultural and historical contexts of the content. Sensitive materials such as personal correspondence, parish records containing private information, or images depicting vulnerable individuals will be evaluated for ethical risk. In such cases, redaction, restricted access, or contextual framing will be used.
Ethical and Legal Foundations:
Most of the materials are organizational or community-owned records for which rights have either expired or are held collectively by the participating archives. These partners have provided written agreements granting Hollinger Multimedia permission to digitize and make the materials publicly accessible. For items with uncertain rights status, fair-use and orphan-works assessments will be conducted following best practices from the Society of American Archivists (SAA) and CLIR’s Rights Statements framework.
Access, Fees, and Barriers:
All digital files, metadata, and finding aids will be made freely available through the EDDA portal without cost or registration requirements. There will be no paywalls, membership restrictions, or institutional barriers.
Community-Centered Commitment:
By empowering each diaspora archive to retain custodial control over its content, EDDA ensures ethical access that reflects the originating communities’ values. The project’s all-women leadership team will continue to consult regularly with partners and, when applicable, with each community to address ongoing rights or any concerns around representation.
Through this collaborative, transparent approach, EDDA upholds both the letter and spirit of CLIR’s core values: ethical digitization, equitable access, and authentic partnership ensuring that once-hidden voices are shared responsibly and respectfully with the public.
The European Diaspora Digital Archives (EDDA) is a project by Hollinger Multimedia International
Hollinger Multimedia International brings 15 years of audiovisual digitization experience, and is dedicated to fostering innovation, collaboration, and equitable access within the global archival community. The organization facilitates networking and cross-disciplinary projects that advance both the technical and practical aspects of archiving worldwide.
With a distinctive focus on legacy audiovisual carriers, Hollinger Multimedia provides platforms for free information-sharing networks that connect archivists and preservation professionals across government archives, museums, special libraries, and cultural institutions. These efforts strengthen archival infrastructures, promote the sustainable preservation of heritage materials, and ensure that the voices of underserved populations, the marginalized, and immigrant communities are represented and preserved.
In the United States, Hollinger Multimedia fosters cooperative projects among community archives, with a particular emphasis on European Diaspora history. The organization serves as a bridge for smaller heritage institutions, enabling them to participate in collaborative digital preservation initiatives. Central to this mission is the European Diaspora Digital Archives (EDDA)—a cooperative digital platform designed to display and share digitized materials from five initial European Diaspora communities: Lithuanian, Czech, Polish, Hungarian, and Bulgarian archives. Hollinger Multimedia is located in Chicago, Illinois. Initially the focus will be to document the shared immigrant experience of Chicago area European diaspora communities. Later phases of the project will expand to other cities in the U.S. and the world.
Importantly, all representatives of the European Diaspora Archives within EDDA are women archivists, forming a team of five women whose leadership and collaboration exemplify Hollinger Multimedia’s commitment to inclusivity, representation, and empowerment in the archival field. As a women-led initiative, Hollinger Multimedia International champions gender equity and cultural diversity as integral components of its mission to advance global access to shared digital heritage.
All resources, networking opportunities, and databases offered by Hollinger Multimedia International are free and accessible to the public, ensuring open participation and equitable access for all.
If you are an archivist seeking to connect with either the European Diaspora archival community, we invite you to email us to request to be added to the appropriate information-sharing channels.