20 The course of the project At the start of the project the archive material from the international trade union organizations in the arts, culture, media and entertainment sector which was already stored in the Archive of social democracy(AdsD) in the Friedrich Ebert Foundation were examined in order to establish their information value. In addition, files were examined in the Brussels offi­ces of MEI and the IFJ. The general conclusion was- and this was not entirely unexpected- that source material about the organizations con­cerned improves with increasing professionalism in their work. The AdsD stores at present project-related collections from the FIA, MEI or ISETU/EGAKU and also from the IFJ and the International Graphical Federation(IGF) 14 .While the source material from both the FIA and the IFJ can be described as comprehensive and conclusive, including their early history, this is certainly less true of the files of ISETU and EGAKU. The numerous changes of location of the ISETU or EGAKU-secretariats obviously caused major gaps in the files. It was not before the late 1980s that the collection became visibly more comprehensive. In contrast, the filed material from ISETU/FISTAV or MEI(since 1999: UNI-MEI) may be said to be well-documented. 15 Against the background of this situation, the emphasis was shifted in the course of the project towards gaining a better insight into the earlier history of the international trade union organizations involved and thus focusing on key personalities and contemporaries who were still alive and could shed more light on it. It was not always easy to find out their addresses: on the one hand, this was achieved by contacting the national trade unions from which the persons concerned originated, on the other by following up information from Jim Wilson, the Secretary General of UNI-MEI, about their possible places of residence. 14 Cp. Paul, Hans-Holger, Documents of the International and European Trade Union Movement within the Archives of social democracy in the Friedrich Ebert Foundation, in: ACTA, XXXI Annual Conference, Oslo, Sept 7-9, 2000, Gent 2000. 15 As regards the situation of files of FIM and FISTAV see below.