Paper short abstract:

The paper seeks to provide a historical overview of the folklore digitizing processes in Latvia and the analysis of the new digital archive of Latvian folklore, www.folklore.lv.

Paper long abstract:

The folklore digitizing processes in Latvia date back to 1990s. There have been both periods of very intensive work and more or less calm phases. Up to present day, the intention has been not just to make safe digital copies of the archived originals but also to bring the collected contents back to society, namely, to bring folklore from the shelves of the Archives to the Internet.

There have been endeavours to cover particular segments of the voluminous holdings of the Archives of Latvian Folklore. Over several years, the analog photos, drawings and sound recordings have been made digital. The text corpora of some folklore genres (such as the collection of proverbs) have been rewritten and made available online. One of the greatest digitizing projects of the first decade was www.dainuskapis.lv, the Cabinet of Folksongs obtained by Krišjaņis Barons (more than 268 000 songs by hundreds of collectors).

The new digital archive of Latvian folklore, www.folklore.lv, started in 2014. Its goal is to make available online almost everything kept in the holdings of the Archives of Latvian Folklore. The digital archive provides convenient online access to all kinds of materials - manuscripts, images, audio and video recordings. It is planned to add more valuable collections in the future.