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Describing the collections of the International Tracing Service (ITS) to make them accessible for historical research is one of the most urgent responsibilities after opening the archives. Over a period of more than six decades, the arrangement of the collections has been adapted to the requirements of a tracing service, which brought families together and clarified the fate of individual victims. Therefore, the Central Name Index was the key to the documents, while the documents were arranged according to victims’ groups.

Now, this principle is no longer sufficient, since historians ask not only for names, but also for topics, events, locations or nationalities. Describing the documents according to scholarly criteria is essential. The aim is to compile finding aids that are based on internationally acknowledged standards (ISAD – International Standard on Archival Description) and can be published online.

In view of the mass of documents, this will be a long-term project. ITS will proceed by describing its inventory bit by bit, as this will allow to present interim results. In a first step, existing finding aids are being prepared for this purpose and made accessible in the form of a provisional overview of the collections.

One by one, the finding aids will complement the present inventory, which enables at least a rough overview of the records for the time being. This inventory resembles more the registration tool of a tracing service than an inventory directory of a scientific archive. For the purpose of clarifying the fates of individuals, a content description of the documents units was required only to some extent. The origin of the document also played a subordinate part for the tracing service. Value sprang from the information on the fate of the individual.

The leitmotif of the description is transparency and usability. The finding aids must be so informative and substantial that a historian is able to see whether or not individual documents are important for his research.

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