At Oxford, Scholars Studying Refugees Prepare to Put Their
Archives Online
The Chronicle of
Higher Education-10/16/01
By DAVID COHEN
Oxford, England
The University of Oxford's Refugee Studies Centre, which
claims to hold the world's largest archive of unpublished literature on forced
migration, will make its collection available online next month.
The project involves much of the center's store of some
30,000 unpublished documents, most of which are not copyrighted. It has been
developed with a $1-million grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, in New
York.
Among the documents are thousands of internal reports
produced both by governments and nongovernmental organizations in parts of the
developing world, including East Timor, the former Soviet republic of Georgia,
Guatemala, Rwanda, and Vietnam, as well as large areas of the Middle East and
Central Asia.
The collection is going online as concern about refugees is
rising, prompted by the U.S.-led military campaign against suspected terrorist
targets in Afghanistan. Here in Britain, authorities are facing what has been
described as a looming crisis involving Afghani refugees attempting to gain
illegal entry into the country.
The Refugee Studies Centre's Web project has been in the
works for more than two years, says Stephen Castles, the center's recently
appointed director. A digital library available to all "will hopefully
serve as a natural complement to the nature of our existing work," says
Mr. Castles.
Established in 1982, the center gathers official material
relating to the causes and consequences of forced migration. It also offers
teaching and research opportunities and maintains ties with universities in
parts of the world where the subject is a part of everyday life.
Along with the online library, the center is also creating
its own Web portal, to be called Forced Migration Online, that will link to
other digital resources from around the world.
Researchers at the center admire the quality of American
research on migration trends, Mr. Castles says, mentioning studies published by
the National Science Council showing "that immigration has been of
enormous benefit to the United States, and that America would be a smaller,
weaker society without it."
"It's regrettable that no such research has been done
in the same systematic way in the United Kingdom," he says. Still, he adds,
"much of what we can offer will soon be available for others around the world
to use."