Norwegian Labour Movement Archives and Library

Norwegian Labour Movement Archives and Library

The Norwegian Labour Movement Archives and Library (Arbeiderbevegelsens arkiv og bibliotek, Arbark) was founded and is still owned by the Norwegian Federation of Trade Unions (Lnadsorganisasjonen i Norge) and the Norwegian Labour Party (Arbeiderpartiet). It is a documentation centre for documentation of the Norwegian labour movement's as well as other social movement's cultural heritage. The main purpose is to document all movements connected to the Norwegian political left in a broad sense, such as the feminist, peace, and solidarity movements, in addition to the social-democratic trade unions and labour parties. This feature distinguishes Arbark from similar institution in other countries, which more often are connected to only one or a few of the political branches of the labour movement. Current director of Arbark is the historian Frank Meyer.

History The initiativ to establish Arbark was taken in 1905 according to a Swedish modell. In 1908 Arbark started to work in the People's House in Oslo. From 1909 records have been submitted to Arbark, and the public has had access to these from 1910. Arbark is the Norwegian Labour movement's eldest cultural organisation and the largest, privately owned record repository in Norway. It is Norway's largest library dedicated to the labour movement and other social movements. Its collections consist of among other about 7.000 shelf meters of records, 1.5 million photographs, 135.000 books, about 465 banners, 70 films and numerous audio records. Digitised parts of Arbark's collections are continuously digitised and available on its homepage.

Networks Arbark is a member of national and international networks of individuals and institutions working with the history of the labour movement's cultural heritage. Arbark publishes the annual Arbeiderhistorie (Labour history).