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Digitization of the Audio Recordings of the Archive of the Institute of Ethnology and Folklore Research and its Availability to the Public

Records of the diverse intangible cultural heritage of the Republic of Croatia are kept in numerous archives and collections. The largest and the most systematic archive of this heritage is situated within the Institute of Ethnology and Folklore Research (IEF) in Zagreb, which has been, since its founding in 1948, steadily increasing its collections of manuscripts and photo, video and audio recordings of the traditional culture of Croats at home, other peoples living in Croatia and of Croats abroad. In keeping with the contemporary trend of opening archives to the public and facilitating access to its archived materials, the IEF is preparing and adapting its archive of intangible cultural heritage for publishing on the Internet. The Institute is working on two large projects in parallel to achieve this goal – the project of digitisation of its archived material and the project of creating a digital repository. Planning and implementing of the repository is conducted within the Institute’s project Croatian Intangible Cultural Heritage, Social Identities and Values, financed by the Croatian Science Foundation (2012 - 2014). In presenting the Audio Library of the Special Collection of Ethnographic Material, several key points of the process of digitisation itself and the process of publishing of the material will be addressed, with emphasis on the problems we are encountering. The audio recordings constitute a unique fund of folkloristic and ethnographic documents from oral literature, folklore music and dance, narrations on customs, architecture, home design and other material about contemporary everyday life, of refugee, migrant and feminist narratives and of recordings of various events and scholarly conferences. Sound is recorded on diverse media, which cannot be easily reproduced due to the lack of technical equipment and the accelerated decay of original recordings. Digitisation is therefore necessary, in the first place to protect the heritage, but also to make it widely available. Because the Institute is not able to digitise the recordings on its own and it also ought to create an efficient and reliable digital repository which would satisfy the Institute’s many needs and specific circumstances, it is necessary to look for experts outside of the Institute as well as to look for the financial support which is indispensable for such projects. During planning and implementation of these demanding projects, different approaches in solving the issues of digitisation, storing and availability have collided, making these issues the key part of our presentation. One example of such a collision is that involving the professional standpoint of our sound specialist on the techniques of digitisation versus the directives of the archival profession and the demands of the ethnologist for authenticity. To depict this in a more vivid way we will present some audio samples, i.e. compare the original recordings with their digital, cleaned and restored versions. We will also present the process of digitisation, processing and storing of digital media, and at the end, the question of fragility and insufficient reliability of the media used to store digital copies, i.e. the need to create multiple copies to secure the recordings. Saving digitised material in a repository is of extraordinary significance, particularly because it enables easier, faster and more precise processing and classification of the material and simplifies its retrieval and manipulation. However, the repository and opening of the archive to the public via the Internet open numerous new questions, from the requirements of researchers and other users of the material to the issue of authorship rights. Being aware of our responsibility for the consequences which our agreements and decisions will have in the future, the process of digitisation is prioritised in the Developmental Strategy of the IEF and its Referral Centre for Intangible Cultural Heritage (currently being established). Increased availability of the material, technological solutions to link data from different databases and media, a database of the conveyors of the intangible cultural heritage and linking with the affiliate institutions of culture in the country and abroad, implemented as a part of the digital repository which is compatible with Europeanna are all prerequisites for better connections with related institutions and for participation in projects financed out of EU funds. It is precisely culture that the EU considers to be essential in improving international cooperation.

digitization; audio recordings; Institute of Ethnology and Folklore Research; Croatia

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