Paper short abstract:

In social sciences archiving and re-using the research materials is a newly found field of theoretical discussions. What can we folklorists as established users of archives learn from the problematics of re-use in social sciences? What could they learn from us?

Paper long abstract:

Mieke Bal's idea of travelling concepts carries with itself an idea of disciplines living somehow in different theoretical realities or different ”time zones”. What is an established state of art someplace can be totally new invention in other place. It looks like in social sciences the questions of archiving and re-using the research materials is a newly found field of theoretical discussions. Interesting discussions about re-using interviews and other types of research materials are taking place especially in European oral history studies (Paul Thompson, Joanna Bornat and Malin Thor Tureby just to name some of our colleagues who have written about this topic), among social scientists (Niamh Moore) and among digital archive people in social sciences and humanities (Libby Bishop, Arja Kuula-Luumi). For a folklorist working in and for folklore archives this situation looks first somewhat funny: haven't we been archiving and re-using our research materials already for a century? However, looking more deeply into the cases of re-use, questions of theoretical implications of re-use and ethical problems in archiving interviews made for a project not existing anymore wakes up also important questions about folklore archives. Have we talked enough about ethical and theoretical questions of the re-use of archived materials? What could we learn from the problematics of re-use in social sciences? Is there something we could offer to this discussion based on our longer practice of secondary analysis of archive materials? Should we be more reflective in our secondary use of research materials?