A Folklore Archive Offline and Online: Digitisation Problems

Abstract

This article aims to identify the main problems associated with the digitisation of a folklore archive and formulate some prospects of digitising materials. The authors analyse Internet archives, folklore and similar electronic resources, databases, and materials from Russian folklore laboratories. The second part of the article is devoted to the connection of technical procedures for labeling folklore texts with the possibility of using the interpretive techniques of this procedure to restore the logic of field research programmes and the contextual connections of the collected data. The concept of context understood as a variety of “horizontal connections” of a folklore text during its functioning in the space of local culture is becoming increasingly important. The conversion of archival data into a digital format can be of practical use not only as a structural ordering – creating a search engine marked with certain markers / tags, but also as an opportunity to reconstruct a partially lost research context. In the materials from the 1960s–2000s, it is often impossible to make up for context from live communication with specialists and members of expeditions due to intergenerational breaks in tradition that have occurred in Russian folklore studies. This article offers a solution which aims to develop one of the practical ways to use the digitisation of an array of field materials to clarify the history of local research schools and associations. The article contains an overview and assessment of the content of the available online folklore archives.