Academic literature on the topic 'Folklore archives'

This article adopts a map methodology to explore the forgotten female folklore collectors in the Norwegian Folklore Archives, examining their connections to the archive and what they collected. By focusing on historically invisible female collectors, the risk is that they are isolated as gender representatives and thus never become a part of the mainstream canon. Still, by literally putting these women on the map, it is our ambition that this will inspire a new take on the question of gender in the history of knowledge of folklore archives. The methodology employed combines remote reading and close reading, zooming in on a particular collector’s life and actions. The article reveals the spatial dimensions of mobility with the aim of expanding our understanding of the female collectors who left their mark on the collection of folklore.

Lene Vinther Andersen: Growing Collections: Recording, Archiving and Researching early Danish Folklore
 The article gives an introduction to the original main collection of the Danish Folklore Archives, entitled Voksende Samlinger (Growing Collections). Growing Collections is an abundant collection of records on folklore and immaterial culture with a focus on the 19th century. Yet the material can appear complicated to understand, fragmented and difficult to use for archive users who are not already familiar with the field and its history. The article examines the cataloguing principles and working methods of the Growing Collections, as well as the visions and ideas on which they are based. It is the ambition of the article to give readers insights into the possibilities and limitations of the Growing Collections, and to encourage readers to use the collection for their own research. A review of the cataloguing structure of the Growing Collections reveals that the records are systematically divided into a number of subject categories following a system devised by Svend Grundtvig in 1861. This systematization is associated with a fundamental conception of folklore as being a source to access a distant past. A close reading of the instructions and articles intended for potential folklore collectors gives an idea of how the researchers of the archives tried to control the form and content of the records created for the archives. Their goal was to collect, cleanse, split up and archive folklore records in the collections, which the researchers would later process and return to the general public as a large number of source publications that generally matched the subject categories of the archives. The publications turned out to be more demanding than first assumed, and the work was not achieved to the extent foreseen. Yet the Danish Folklore Archives continued to create archive material based on the aforementioned working methods and ideals up to around 1960, and the result was a well-ordered collection of folklore records with detailed metadata and an extensive catalogue. It is also a collection characterised by a radical splitting-up of material, and a focus on subjects that interested the researchers at the time. In view of the history of the Growing Collections and its underlying philosophy, it will, however, be possible to locate material that is of relevance to contemporary research interests, and the use of consistent metadata makes it possible to cross-reference both the material in the Growing Collections and in other archives. The article concludes with some specific proposals for the use of the material in cultural history research, as well as some reservations with regard to methodology that might be considered.

Aquest article estudia dos arxius de folklore recents de California: els Arxius de Folklore de la Universitat de California Berkeley, fundats per Alan Dundes, i els Arxius de Folklore Digitals de la Universitat del Sud de California, que vaig posar en marxa fa pocs anys. En aquesta anàlisi, el meu objectiu és situar aquests arxius no només com a llocs d’actuacions, sinó també com a actuacions en sí amb participants, contextos i influències. L’Arxiu de la Universitat de Califòrnia Berkeley va sorgir en una època d’agitació social a Amèrica i a la folklorística americana, mentre que els Arxius de la Universitat del Sud de Califòrnia van aparèixer com a part integral del canvi digital i global de la cultura humana. Els arxius són una part fonamental dels estudis de folklore i el fet d’estudiar-los permet entendre més la disciplina i el paper que té en la societat que l’envolta i en què funciona i que sovint diu que representa. Aquest informe breu pretén servir per entendre com segueixen adaptant-se els estudis de folklore i com els arxius poden continuar sent important i rellevants per a un món que està canviant tan de pressa.

ge group of professional scientists and local ethno-culture preservation enthusiasts. The collected audio and video material is transferred to the most famous folklore archives in Kyiv, Lviv and Dnipro, and to regional cultural heritage protection institutions. It is a time-consuming process which is not always carried out systematically and consistently. In February 2022, the hostilities launched by the Russo-fascists in Ukraine fundamentally changed the specifics of this work. In these difficult conditions, it is necessary to look for opportunities urgently to transfer the mentioned recordings of ethnographic material, or copies of them, for storage in similar secure foreign archives. The article provides information about the author’s personal recordings of Ukrainian folklore, their scope, preservation possibilities, and the prospects for their documentation and research in Vilnius, in the archive of the Department of Folklore of the Institute of Lithuanian Literature and Folklore.

The report presents a description of the most popular digital folklore archives in the world. Specifications for designing and developing web-based social-oriented applications in the field of education and cultural tourism are formulated on the basis of comparative analysis. A project for structuring and categorizing the content is presented. A website for accessing the digital folklore archive is designed and implemented.

This article deals with two activities of the Lithuanian Science Society (LSS, 1907–1938) and the history of the folklore collections it accumulated. Its members encouraged people to record folk songs, fairytales, stories, riddles, and other forms of folklore, and they tried to gather in one place all the older manuscripts that contained folklore. This way, the LSS’s folklore archive was formed at the beginning of the twentieth century. In 1908, Eduard Wolter, a member of the LSS, made the first folklore sound recordings with a phonograph apparatus. The chair of the Society, Jonas Basanavičius, knew about the Phonogram Archives of Vienna and Berlin; therefore, he encouraged the establishment of such an archive in Vilnius. Another idea of the LSS, initiated by Mykolas Biržiška, was to gather all the songs in one place and to publish a national songbook. Unfortunately, these goals were visionary and utopian for this period of cultural development in Lithuania. In this study, the birth of these ideas and the path to their realisation are chronologically reviewed. The author discusses the reasons why they were not accomplished in the first part of the twentieth century, and gives explanations for why they were successfully implemented in the second part of the twentieth – beginning of the twenty-first centuries. The historical-political context as well as the actual digitisation of intangible heritage archives help clarify the process.

The paper discusses the content of one of the largest folklore archives in Russia belonging to the Institute of Language, Literature and History of the Karelian Scientific Center of the Russian Academy of Sciences. Systematic work of collecting folklore, carried out for more than 100 years, contributed to the creation of archives reflecting the historical events of an entire era. In the 1930s a new historical period began, giving life to the new forms of epic art — the so-called “novinas,” held in the Archive. During the Great World War, prisoners of the Finnish concentration camps created the so-called pieces of camp folklore, reviving the genre of lamentation. In the postwar period, researches were urged to deal with “Soviet” folklore, and not with the “frozen” forms of folk art. The archival materials collected among the representatives of deported people — Ingrian Finns — bear witness of the historical time. In the second half of the 20th century ideological pressure in the folkloristic studies continued, as superstitions and prejudices were sought to be eradicated, and the collection of folklore reflecting folk religious beliefs was not welcomed.

This article describes how artists, scholars and curators have used folkloric collections and exhibitions as tools to explore the relationship between tradition and innovation. Contemporary art practice has seen a growing interest toward the use of folkloric material. With this in mind, in our curatorial work on the Forging Folklore, Disrupting Archives exhibition, we experiment with new methods of ethnographic representation. The article highlights the importance of animating folkloric and traditional objects through experimentation with collaborative, participatory and visual approaches.

The digitisation and preservation of language and folklore sound collections are highly relevant issues for many archival institutions in the Russian Federation. The folklore archive of the Udmurt Institute of History, Language and Literature in Izhevsk has not been an exception to this. The first folklore and language recordings on analogue magnetic tapes appeared in the early 1960s. In subsequent years, local folklorists and linguists made numerous expeditions to survey all areas of Udmurtia and the neighbouring regions where the Udmurts lived. Estonian researchers also participated in the recording of the Udmurt language and folklore during expeditions both in Estonia and outside. The article covers the joint efforts of Estonian and Udmurt scholars in collecting Udmurt folklore and language materials, which are currently stored at the Estonian Folklore Archives.

The paper is devoted to the problem of creating an electronic version of a folklore archive and finding ways to present it on the Internet. A preliminary review of the electronic archives of folklore materials posted on the Internet indicates different approaches to their implementation. In the category of archives containing information about folk songs, various methods of classifying musical genres are used, as well as ways of organizing them, which in general makes it difficult for the user to work with resources. The authors of this study propose their own development of a draft electronic map Ethno-cultural heritage of Belgorod Region. This information resource is aimed at both professional figures in the field of folk music and a wide range of amateurs. The basis of the electronic map was made up of expeditionary materials from the archive of Folk Singing Art Department of Belgorod State Institute of Arts and Culture. While developing the project, modern trends in the presentation of archival materials on the Internet were taken into account, which made it possible to fully reveal the traditional culture of the region. The proposed method of presenting information allows you to maximally illuminate the musical genre composition of folk singing, get acquainted with the creative heritage of outstanding performers, as well as greatly facilitates the search for specific song samples, both among the archive materials and in existing publications.