The parish of St. Barbara in Vienna, established in 1784 by Joseph II for the Catholics of the Byzantine rite, has since then served members of various rite churches and nationalities (especially Ukrainians, but also Romanians, Hungarians, Croats, Slovaks, members of the Melkite Church and Austrians). The history of this parish and its members, which has so far only been rudimentarily researched, was and is closely interwoven with the history of the aforementioned nations and is highly significant for the coexistence of peoples and religions in Austria and Europe.

The parish archives, housed in the parish office (Riemergasse 1-3/11, 1010 Vienna), comprise archival records from 1784 to the present. The entire holdings require further indexing, arrangement and listing for administrative and scientific use. Some holdings should be digitised for conservation reasons.

For this purpose, a project was installed at the end of 2021 in the form of a cooperation between the Central Parish of St. Barbara (Rev. Dr. Taras Chagala), the Department of Theology and History of the Christian East of the Institute of Historical Theology at the University of Vienna (Univ.-Prof. Dr. Dr. Thomas Németh) and the Association Network History of Lower Austria (HR Dr. Willibald Rosner, former Director of the Lower Austrian Provincial Archives). Ms Ulyana Makukh has been entrusted with the work of the first phase, which is gratefully supported financially by the Foundation Zusammenleben and the Network History Austria.

The aim of the project is to comprehensively organise and index the archive.  The archive is to be stored professionally and made accessible through an inventory containing a history of the holdings and institutions. Furthermore, the transfer of the current written material to the archive is to be ensured in accordance with the applicable regulations.