Human Rights Documents

Human Rights Documents (HRD) is a digital version of the microfiche collection of the same name, published by IDC (now an imprint of Brill). HRD contains over 40,000 documents published by 483 organizations between 1980 and 2007 that were gathered by the Human Rights Internet (HRI), an independent nongovernmental organization. The greatest strength of HRD is the unique and rich content, especially from the 1980s to 2000, that is generally difficult to locate online or in academic library collections. NGO reports, newsletters, flyers, pamphlets, and other ephemera form the core of this collection. Institutions may purchase or subscribe to HRD and new content is regularly added but with about a three year delay from when original items are first published. IDC continues to microfilm and then scan film to generate new digital content. HRD is thus limited in its usefulness for very current research, especially when one considers the growing availability of human rights information on the internet. The search and discovery interface will require further development to allow researchers to fully benefit from this important source material.