Paper short abstract:

The paper focuses on the ambiguous role, dilemmas and opportunities of an archival researcher when planning and designing the streams in and out of archives.

Paper long abstract:

Archives are never mere collections of documents, there are always purposes, intentions for creating and using these collections, the ideologies and public interests behind these intentions, and last but not least the real persons, researchers and archivists who implement, factualize the intentions, having power to control and direct streams in and out of archives. The paper focuses on the ambiguous role, dilemmas and opportunities of an archival researcher in fulfilling the public task, responding the requirements of a funder, and performing his or her personal agenda. When planning and designing the collection and intake of materials, organizing the materials, deciding what is relevant and what is not, and mediating these materials back to the public or to the international research community, researcher has to find its way how to negotiate and reconcile different aims, interests, ideologies and expectations. The paper seeks to analyze such instances of the reconciliations in different historical periods of Estonian folkloristics.