I was once told that written archives do not make good exhibition materials. My contention was that they did if they were displayed with care and due consideration for the audience and in conjunction with other more primarily visual materials. This was amply demonstrated to me by the exhibitions that I visited in Berlin last week. On a warm spring day I spent a few hours walking along the former line of the Berlin Wall and past fragments that remained standing in a peaceful and slightly unkempt cemetery, as well as a former watchtower standing incongruously amongst modern apartment buildings. I then arrived at the main Berlin Wall Memorial – a short length of the wall that has been maintained as a monument and, unlike most of the remaining fragments, is clean of all graffiti. Opposite the wall is the Information Centre. It is quite modest in size and has a simple layout, with one main exhibition area showing a small but effective display that mixes silent film footage (all the more effective for being silent), arresting and shocking photographs, audio reports and copies of archival material, including newspaper reports, personal testaments and postcards.

An even more memorable and haunting experience was Peter Eisenmann’s new Holocaust Memorial and the new information centre beneath. The memorial itself consists of 2,711 concrete blocks (‘stelae’) arranged in undulating rows with narrow gaps between them. The information centre is everything such a place should be. It has a sombre and quiet atmosphere and it tells the story of the Holocaust simply but very effectively. There are only a few rooms and they are themed, including one on families, one on individuals and one on locations. The first room consisted of illuminated areas on the floor that corresponded to the stelae above and displayed blown-up copies of archive materials, mainly personal letters, including one written in haste by a woman on a train who did not know its destination – it ended at a concentration camp. She flung the letter from the train and a local farmer found it and posted it on. The families room is deeply affecting, with the stories of 13 families brought to life through 13 panels showing photographs, archives, some film footage and short explanations of the plight of the families, with a record of those who died and those who survived. Much of the archive material comes from the families themselves and in fact one panel has very few photographs or documents, reflecting the reality that most families lost all of their personal possessions and for many people who perished in the concentration camps there may be no photographic or other personal evidence of their life before the War. The personal memorials room dedicated to individuals is a dark, empty space, illuminating one name on the wall at a time and telling a short history of that person, whether it be a 5 year old girl from Poland or a 75 year old man from Austria.

For me the Holocaust Memorial and information centre were very moving and affecting. A great deal of thought and care must have gone into the design of the centre, and the exhibits were obviously chosen very carefully so that the rooms were not overfull of masses of information but kept largely empty, with the archive materials used to great effect and speaking volumes about the past. My only reservation is that this is not a memorial for all who died in the genocide and that Berlin appears to be ending up with a number of victims’ memorials and a number of arguments over who should get what and where.

For me, Berlin is a city where archives really do play a central and very noticeable role in telling the story of a city and particularly of the dark and difficult events of Second World War.

I attended a talk on Second Life today by Andy Powell of Eduserv. Second Life is a 3-d virtual world that is currently being very hyped up and has received a great deal of interest from educators interested in its potential for e-learning.

Second Life (SL) is free to enter and navigate around, but in order to really get involved you need to buy land, which effectively means buying server space with Linden Labs, the developer and owner of the software. The world is populated by avatars (residents) but Andy warned that those who are looking for a gaming environment would be disappointed – Second Life does not have a purpose as such; it is generally used to buy, sell, entertain and learn. In fact, you can (within acceptable limits) do what you like within SL, including building your own games, houses, galleries, offices and shops.

The software does require a high spec machine, which is likely to limit its value to schools and colleges, but it does have potential as a useful learning environment. You could, for example, buy a plot of land, build a gallery and show an exhibition of archive materials, complete with notes about each exhibit and links to the online catalogues. You could also decide to have a lecture space where you run a slideshow – Andy had just such a space on ‘Eduserv Island’ where he was showing the PowerPoint slides for the day’s session. You can also have an audio presentation as QuickTime is integrated with SL. The main drawback is that you can only have about 40 people in a space at any one time, but it is likely that this will change over time.

You communicate in SL by chat, either public or private, which effectively means typing rather than true audio communication, though this is apparently proposed for future versions of SL. You create your own profile, which may include your interests and skills, and you can create groups of friends so that you are told when a friend is currently in SL.

Andy had built himself a shoe shop and was designing and selling shoes for