New Developments and Software Improvements
The Oral-History.Digital curation and research platform, which has been online since 2023, is continuously being improved. Here you will find an overview of new features and software improvements since 2025. Technical release notes can be found at https://github.com/oral-history-digital/ohd/releases.
Übersicht:
New in the second quarter of 2026
Media Management Tool (MMT)
The Media Management Tool (MMT) in oh.d supports interview projects with the upload and processing of their own media files. It has been fundamentally revised and expanded: using single sign-on, you can log in directly to the MMT with your Oral-History.Digital account, bundle multiple media files into a single project, listen to them directly in the MMT, and specify processing requirements, e.g. for speech recognition. The generated transcripts can be downloaded more easily. More Info at mmt@oral-history.digital.
New in the first quarter of 2026
New homepage
Following a redesign, the Oral-History.Digital starting page is now more attractive and clearer. The content descriptions of the archives and collections, which are particularly important for initial research, are now highlighted.
Better overview of institutions, archives and collections
The overview of institutions, archives and collections has been redesigned, as the previous catalogue had become confusing with more than 5,000 interviews across 200 collections from 50 institutions. Users can now browse and search through institutions and their sub-units on the one hand, and the archives and associated collections on the other, including detailed descriptions of the archives and collections.
A map of the institutions shows the locations of the universities, museums, foundations, etc., and their sub-units, which, as archive partners, make their interviews available on Oral-History.Digital.
Archive and collection descriptions
The descriptions of the archives and collections have become more informative. In addition to a description of the content, these overview pages now also show the number and accessibility of the interviews, as well as the media type, language(s), years of the interviews, cooperation partners, a suggested citation and further information. An example of this is https://portal.oral-history.digital/en/catalog/archives/21894736.
Multi-factor authentication
Multi-factor authentication (MFA) protects your login details against misuse by adding an extra layer of security alongside your password. After registering, you can set up an authentication app or a passkey in your account. If you have editing rights in your archive area as an archive administrator, you should definitely set up multi-factor authentication. Further details at https://www.oral-history.digital/en/hilfe/ohd_tutorial_registrierung/index.html.
New filter: Interview year
Across all collections, you can now filter by interview year in Oral-History.Digital, thereby narrowing your search to a specific project period, including in combination with filters such as year of birth or media type.
Improvements to the editing view
Usability has been improved in various input forms within the editing view. Among other things, transcriptions can now be edited inline without having to open a separate pop-up window. Performance improvements are in the pipeline.
Further security improvements
Various measures have been implemented to enhance security, such as improved password rules and a virus scan during file uploads.
New in the second half of 2025
Additional materials / Uploading PDF files
In addition to photos, PDF files can now also be uploaded for individual interviews, e.g. manually generated transcripts without timecodes, consent forms, media data sheets, archive documents relating to the interviewees, etc. The PDF files can be set to public or private individually. Further details can be found in the Help section (PDF documentation).
Video tutorials and FAQs on the website
Video tutorials and answers to frequently asked questions are now available under ‘Help’ directly on the project website: https://www.oral-history.digital/hilfe. These will be expanded in future. There are also video tutorials on key indexing steps for archive holders. More detailed instructions are available in the online help (currently accessible only via the FU network) and the PDF documentation.
Interfaces
The interviews from Oral-History.Digital should also be discoverable in higher-level directories of the National Research Data Infrastructure (NFDI), for example the catalogues of the NFDI consortia Text+ (Linguistics) and 4Memory (History). To this end, an OAI interface was developed as part of the ‘Text+ohd’ project. This allows metadata on archives and associated collections to be automatically retrieved in Dublin Core or DataCite formats. In future, metadata on individual interviews will also be available via this interface, specifically the data – usually anonymised – that is displayed on the interview landing pages without requiring registration in oh.d. Details at https://www.fu-berlin.de/text_ohd.
TEI Export
Interview transcripts can now be exported as XML files in the TEI format developed by the Text Encoding Initiative, provided the necessary permissions are granted. This standard, widely used in digital editions, increases the interoperability of oral history interviews with other research data. Details can be found at https://www.fu-berlin.de/text_ohd.
Topic Modeling Dashboard
The statistical method of Topic Modeling allows for the automatic generation of subject index keywords and table of contents headings. This is currently being tested in the Archive "Deutsches Gedächtnis" and may be used in other archives in the future. A visual search tool based on this method is currently being evaluated. Details can be found at https://www.oral-history.digital/dokumente/index.html#tm.
Minor Improvements
Various minor issues have been resolved, such as those related to index editing and nested transcription characters.
Release Numbers
Since September 2025, software improvements have been assigned a three-digit release number, which is displayed at the bottom of the portal page. Version 1.4.1 is currently available on GitHub. Details can be found at https://github.com/oral-history-digital/ohd/releases.
New in the first half of 2025
Activation process
To make the two-step process of registration in oh.d and activation for the individual archive clearer, a progress bar below the login button (top right) displays the necessary steps. Further details can be found in the Help section (PDF documentation).
New interview status: accessible upon request
To enable more nuanced access control for particularly sensitive interviews, a new status, "upon request," has been introduced alongside the "accessible" and "not accessible" statuses. Even after activation in the archive, these interviews are not directly available to users; access must be requested via email. Further details can be found in the Help section (PDF documentation).
Help Pages and Tutorials
The comprehensive help pages for researching in the interview portal and indexing in the editorial view are now available in both German (https://wikis.fu-berlin.de/x/Fo20TQ) and English (https://wikis.fu-berlin.de/x/YQToWw). Many detail pages can be accessed directly from individual indexing forms via a green information box with a question mark. The help is continuously being updated and now also includes some video tutorials. If the online help is unavailable, comprehensive PDF documentation can be found under Help.
Video/Audio Controls
The control bar below the media player has been improved. You can now skip forward and backward by 5 seconds, more easily see the current playback time, or reduce the playback speed.
Improved Full-Text Search
In German, word stems are now found even without truncation using asterisks, etc. Searches like "Such" and "suchen" now also find "sucht." Information about searching can be found under Cross-Archive Search.
Speech Recognition
The automatic transcription service ASR4Memory is now available to archives in oh.d. Details can be found at https://www.fu-berlin.de/asr4memory.
Arabic and Hebrew Transcripts
Transcripts in right-left scripts are now displayed right-aligned.
Two Translation Options
If transcripts have been translated into multiple languages, several translations, e.g., German/German and English, can now be offered in addition to the original transcript.
Authority Data for Place Name Indexes
When creating a new index entry, e.g., for the birthplace of an interviewee, you can now automatically retrieve authority data from the Integrated Authority File (GND) of the German National Library and related vocabularies such as Wikidata and OpenStreetMap. Always use this feature for places to make your interviews easier to find in the cross-archive search within oh.d. Linking to authority data for corporate bodies and subject headings is also supported. Further details can be found in the Help section (PDF documentation).
Archive and Collection Descriptions
Archive and collection descriptions are displayed in the oh.d catalog in German and English and are accessible in higher-level directories, such as the National Research Data Infrastructure, provided they have been entered by the archive owners.
Publication Year
A publication year is now listed for each archive, collection, and interview. Enter the year of digital publication via the Oral-History.Digital portal. For interview citations, we still recommend including the interview date and the date the interview was accessed.
Usage Statistics
Using the privacy-compliant statistics tool Matomo, we can now collect data on the search behavior of registered users in the portal and in individual archives and analyze it for future portal improvements.
Preview Images
Preview images are automatically generated when video files are transcoded for oh.d. For audio interviews, interviewees can upload portraits as preview images. Further details can be found in the Help section (PDF documentation).
- To the Interview portal