The IISH Reading Room was extremely popular last year. 6401 times visitors called upon the Reading Room desk, 800 more compared to the previous year. The influx of students, journalists, researchers and other interested persons mainly came from the Netherlands (5113 persons), but also from abroad (1288 persons). IISH staff members took 8163 books, 3221 periodicals and 8290 archive files from the shelves for all these visitors.
What was the topic of their studies? The list of the 50 most consulted archives on the website gives a good image. Completely in line with the globalization trend the archives of international active organizations come first: the International Confederation of Trade Unions is number 1, runner up is Amnesty International and the Socialist International is number 3. The War Resisters International (7) and Greenpeace (14) get high scores. The Spanish Civil War also remains an intriguing topic, the CNT and FAI score 9th and 10th place and the beautiful collection about the Dutch Internationale Brigadisten finds itself on number 20.Within the Dutch range the Communist Party (4) beat the SDAP/PvdA (6 and8). The anarchists and squatters, in Provo and Staatsarchief, were also very well consulted, probably to prepare for the 50th anniversary of Provo in 2015.
Country of Origin of IISH Visitors
1. The Netherlands 826
2. USA 51
3. England 38
4. Germany 35
5. France 25
6. Spain 23
7. Italy 14
8. Belgium 9. Canada (13)
10. Turkey 8
11. Australia 12. Japan 13. Denmark (6)
14. Argentina 15. Poland 16. Mexico (5)
17. Switzerland 18. Sweden 19. Indonesia (4)
20. Norway 21. Austria 22. Czech Republic (3)
23. Ghana 24. India 25. Ireland 26. China 27. Uruguay 28. Brazil 29. Scotland 30. Andorra 31. Russia 32. Chile (2)
33. Kazakhstan 34. Lebanon 35. Romania 36. South Korea 37. South Africa 38. Thailand 39. Israël 40. Portugal 41. Palestina 42. Singapore 43. Costa Rica 44. Greece (1)