Eversince the set-up phase, the project team of the new platform is working closely with various oral history archives and interview projects. The pilot archives use the infrastructure to index their interview collections and provide valuable feedback for further development. These include, for example, the user-friendliness of the indexing platform, suitable media formats or transcription methods. In addition to the Buchenwald and Mittelbau-Dora memorials, these pilot archives also include universities, museums and other foundations eager to use oh.d as an indexing platform and research environment in the long term.
Through oh.d, "Freie Universität Berlin" offers the infrastructure as a scientific service to external partners. To this end, contracts are to be concluded with about a dozen of archive partners until the portal is finally released on 25 September 2023.
On 10 July 2023, the first oh.d contract was signed with the Buchenwald and Mittelbau-Dora Memorials Foundation. As part of the Foundation's digitisation project, up to 200 interviews with survivors and contemporary witnesses at the Buchenwald and Mittelbau-Dora memorials will initially be made accessible and made available via oh.d for research and education.
