Services

The CHC Documentation and Information Centre (DIC) is open regularly

Monday  9 - 12 and 13 - 17

Tuesday - Thursday  9 - 13

The DIC is essentially a large and unique human rights library that was established in 1995 with the aid of the Ford Foundation and the Phare grants. The core of its holdings was initially made of documents, publications and materials collected since the CHC establishment. Subsequently with the aid of acquisition grants and books donations the DIC holdings have been constantly growing - thus a unique human rights collection has been developed. The DIC is used primarily by students of law and social sciences, by NGOs, journalists and professionals.

The documents, materials and publications are often donated by Czech, foreign / international organisations and institutions working in the field of human rights. Part of the holdings have been purchased thanks to acquisition grants provided e.g. by the European Commission, Know How Fund, Canadian Embassy. The entire collections have been delivered for instance by the Open Society Institute, and newly the human rights library of the Netherlands Helsinki Committee. Thanks to this kind of support the DIC has not only a diverse collection but also abounds in recent publications produced by leading publisher houses.

The core of the DIC holdings are publications produced by leading international human rights groups and institutions such as Council of Europe, UNO, International Organisation for Migration (IOM), International Helsinki Federation (IHF) and individual Helsinki Committees, Human Rights Watch, Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), European Roma Rights Centre (ERRC), Amnesty International, Minority Rights Group (MRG), Penal Reform International (PRI) and many more, as well as grey literature produced by smaller NGOs. There are also many publications produced by specialised academic institutions, such as Refugee Studies Programme / Centre, Oxford University.

The DIC can also offer its users a fairly rich collection of reference books, encyclopedias, dictionaries. Of growing importance to the DIC collection are electronic documents and books.

The press clipping archive of 3 - 4 leading Czech dailies is also unique. It has been developed since 1995: the clippings are chronologically filed by topics and sub-topics covering all the areas of human / civil / social rights in the Czech Republic.  The entire archive is also available to the DIC readers.

Outline of areas covered by the DIC collection:

• General human rights
  
• National minorities
  
• Other minorities
  
• Criminal justice - penitential system - prisons
  
• Women
  
• Social issues
  
• Human rights education
  
• Children
  
• Refugees - migrants
  
• Religions
  
• Police
  
• European Union

Most of the materials, documents and publications are in Czech and English, considerable part of the collection is in Slovak, German, French, Russian, Polish, Dutch, Spanish and another languages.

The DIC serves on-site readers only. Readers can make use of a copier and have access to the Internet.

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Address: Dokumentační a informační středisko ČHV, Štefánikova 21,150 00 Praha 5

Tel.: 257 221 141

Head Librarian
e-mail: gabriela.karczubova(at)helcom.cz

         Information Specialist
e-mail: alzbeta.kolumpekova(at)helcom.cz