Housed in two former factory buildings from the 19th century, the Museum Arbeitswelt is not only the first and only labour museum in Austria, but has also established itself as an internationally renowned cultural institution and a place of learning that is known beyond the country's borders since it opened in 1987.

The digital collection of the Museum Arbeitswelt created as part of the project comprises around 12,000 digitised objects (photos, documents and 3D objects) from the archive. The photo collections on labour and economic history range from the end of the 19th century to the 1980s and show factory and industrial work in various branches of industry, such as the metalworking industry (iron and steel industry), textile industry or tobacco industry.

The digitised holdings include photographs of factory buildings of the Österreichische Waffenfabriksgesellschaft, which was located in the Wehrgraben in Steyr from the 1860s and was one of the largest arms factories in the Habsburg Monarchy. The pictures also show the new buildings of the so called Waffenfabrik on the Ennsleite, where Steyr-Daimler-Puch AG was located from the 1930s and where the successor companies are located today. The photos document the history of industrialization in Austria up to the second half of the 20th century. Rare photographs reveal the history of work and bear witness to the high degree of organization of the early workers' movement.

The photo collections from the interwar period depict the political power relations of the First Republic and the strengthening of the labour movement. They include various images of unemployment in Steyr and Upper Austria and show the hardship and misery during the Great Depression in the 1930s. They also show the living and housing conditions of the working population in Steyr and the diverse associational life of the workers' movement.

In addition to topics such as work and industrialization, the Museum Arbeitswelt's photo collection also includes images of historical value. Individual items in the photo collection cover the formation of political camps and the radicalization in the First Republic and extend into the period of Austrofascism. A self-contained collection on the February battles of 1934 includes, for example, photographs of Schutzbund members and Heimwehr troops. The photographic material documents, among other things, the destruction caused by the armed conflict in Steyr in February 1934, in particular the shelling of workers' housing in the Ennsleite district.

Other photo collections show the National Socialist armaments industry during the Second World War and the associated forced labour in Steyr and the surrounding area. They show the working conditions and the fate of forced labourers and concentration camp prisoners and record the Nazi terror and the National Socialist policy of extermination.

Several picture collections also document the history of the creation of the Museum Arbeitswelt in Steyr with the first exhibition "Arbeit. Mensch. Maschine" and other exhibition activities from 1987 onwards, showing the museum's engagement with the subject of work.

The digitised documents from the archive document the living and working conditions of women and men from the end of the 19th century in the form of servants' books, work certificates and work books. The collection contains work and service certificates and provides information about the wages and earnings as well as the social conditions of workers.

Factory regulations and building plans illustrate the organizational structures and spatial conditions of factories, as well as the further development of Steyr as an industrial and business location.

Minutes of trade union meetings and first-person documents such as diaries or letters from workers and political functionaries (only men) show the development of the workers' movement from the end of the 19th century to the second half of the 20th century.

The Hack-Werke collection is an important part of this. This collection of the knife factory, which closed in the 1980s, contains board minutes, trade union minutes, building plans and sketches.

The three-dimensional museum items digitised for the project range from pins of the Social Democratic Workers' Party (SDAP) and its predecessor organizations from the interwar period to objects from the Nazi era, everyday and household objects, work equipment, tools and smaller machine parts and models.

The digitised museum objects document everyday life and work from 1900 to 1990. The majority of the items come from factories and industrial companies located in Steyr, such as the Steyr-Werke (Steyr-Daimler-Puch AG) or the Hack-Werke. However, the digitised objects also include everyday historical items such as crockery, hygiene articles, clothing and sports equipment. These objects have found their way into the museum from various private collections.