Please read carefully to see if you meet our access eligibility requirements:

The 1947 Partition Archive’s complete oral history collections are now available to researchers.  Please note that derived data aggregates are no longer available.

Raw, unprocessed footage for all interviews is available for advanced research and educational purposes as it arrives at The 1947 Partition Archive.  Archive access is available to everyone, including academic researchers, museum and collections curators, authors, filmmakers, other educational media makers and the general public.  Aspiring researchers may fill out the form below to gain access.  Because of the sensitive nature of the content, accessibility to collections via online streaming (paid) is currently limited to professional researchers with institutional affiliations only.  For everyone else, the collections are available for access by appointment at our Berkeley HQ.

New! Researchers may now request streaming access directly to their institutional libraries.  Please ask your librarian to get in touch with us if there is interest in an institutional subscription.  This is an excellent choice for institutions interested in using the collections for classroom teaching or for research purposes.

There’s good news for online public access. A subset of oral history interviews are currently streaming online via the Stanford University Libraries’ Digital Repository.  Pending funding required for accession, more interviews will be freely available via online streaming at the Stanford Digital Repository over the coming years. Furthermore, verified family members of interviewees, with the interviewees’ permission, may request access to their oral history interviews via this online form.  Thank you for your patience as we work through the logistics of dissemination around this significant and delicate collection.

The three accessibility options currently available, include 1) on-site access at our global headquarters in Berkeley, California, for the general public, 2) paid online web-streaming access to researchers, and 3) access via your institutional/university libraries. 

A note about on-site access:  Researchers are responsible for travel and lodging arrangements in Berkeley.  Our staff can provide guidance and recommendations. 

A note about remote access:  Remote access is offered to researchers on a case by case basis only, and the researcher will be responsible for the remote access streaming platform fee. Researchers could bypass this process by asking their institutional library to contact us and subscribe to the collection for safe streaming via library systems.

Given the raw form of the footage currently available, remote accessibility is approved only on a case-by-case basis.  In making our decision we will access the following features of your proposal: 1) importance and relevance of the research topic, 2) the seriousness of the research project and 3) the Principal Investigator’s previous work (if you are a graduate student doing a first time research project, we will access the quality of your advisor’s previous work, so we suggest listing your advisor as the Principal Investigator).

Please note for stories that are deposited in the Stanford Digital Repository, access is freely available. 

Please use the initial screening form below to answer a few basic questions.  We will send you the full application form if you meet the eligibility requirements. Contact us for more information.