Paper short abstract:

A case study approach highlights the ways in which indigenous communities and non-indigenous archives collaborate to provide culturally informed collections descriptions for cultural heritage media collections.

Paper long abstract:

This paper will examine the ways in which indigenous communities and non-indigenous archival repositories in the US are collaborating to produce culturally informed and context-rich descriptions of archival collections for both community and public access. The Ancestral Voices initiative at the US national library embeds community generated descriptions, translations from the native language, and subject terminology in catalog records that significantly expand and enrich sparse catalog records with indigenous knowledge. The initiative is the most prominent of an expansive program to respectfully and ethically engage community voices in the process of reparative cataloging and archival practices that displace racialized and pejorative terminology in creating access to indigenous cultural heritage.

Paper short abstract:

The Respectful Terminology Platform Project is an Indigenous-led multi-year project aimed at creating a permanent, sustainable online platform providing access to dynamic, multilingual source for terminology and vocabulary sets that can be applied to Indigenous people and their knowledge systems.

Paper long abstract:

The Respectful Terminology Platform Project (RTPP). The RTPP is an Indigenous-led multi-year project to be completed over six years to create a permanent and sustainable online platform that will be a dynamic, multilingual source for terminology and vocabulary sets that can be applied to Indigenous Peoples, places, heritage, tradition, knowledge, and cultures within the country now known as Canada.

In many organizations, information systems, and collections, sources of subject terms used for Indigenous peoples and their knowledge and cultures are rooted in colonial systems, concepts of the world, with many terms developed by government organizations to record the stolen material culture and related to the control of Indigenous peoples. Lacking accessible and efficient alternatives, outdated language continued to be used in numerous libraries, archives, and government agencies.

The RTPP is intended to address the gap by not only providing more appropriate, community-vetted subject terms, but also lower the barrier for adoption via the development of a shared, accessible, open source community platform thus answering the urgent need to address problematic terms. Furthermore, the development of an Indigenous-led cataloguing platform which centres Indigenous governance, including Indigenous data principles such as CARE, moves to ensure Indigenous sovereignty and ways of working are core.

This presentation will outline the project’s beginnings, its goals, and focus on the ways that it furthers the work of reconciliation in the country now known as Canada. The presentation will also discuss the connection between the RTPP, governance, and the movement toward reparative cataloguing.

Paper short abstract:

By focusing on the case of “Vite Archives”, a collaborative archival project in the neighbourhood of Vite (Santiago de Compostela, Galicia, Spain), we analyse the mechanisms by which archiving can be imagined, constructed and enacted as a tool to search for social justice.

Paper long abstract:

Vite is a neighbourhood in Santiago de Compostela (Galicia, Spain) that was marked with the stigma of being a marginal neighbourhood in the last decades of the twentieth century. Its transformation from a rural area to a public housing project in the 1970s, and from there to embrace a collective sense of neighbourhood pride, has been shaped by local struggles and the interweaving of a dense web of caring relationships between different generations and social groups. Through a collaborative project between the “Coordinadora del Barrio de Vite” (that includes different neighbourhood stakeholders) and INCIPIT-CSIC, a community archive named “ViteArquiva” was created in 2019 (https://vitearquiva.com). Through a participatory process, the name "ViteArquiva" (in Galician, meaning Vite Archives, instead of the Archive of Vite) was selected to emphasize the action of archiving. This paper analyses the mechanisms by which archiving can be imagined, constructed and enacted as a tool to search for social justice. ViteArquiva is a neighborhood project in progress. Currently, the project is critically contemplating the different digital possibilities of representing the existing archived materials and the future actions of archiving.

Paper short abstract:

By curating and publishing a community collection of Island-specific interviews and photographs in an Irish national folklore database, we – archivists, university and community leaders – are together preserving and showcasing its riches.

Paper long abstract:

Árainn is the largest of the three Aran Islands, off the west coast of Ireland. Bailiúchán Béaloidis Árann (the Folklore of Árainn Collection) is the only major collection of the island's folklore and photographs ever to have been collected by islanders themselves. Amid the array of collections of Árainn folklore created since the nineteenth century, it is remarkable that a collection made by islanders and for islanders should emerge. This collection contains a wealth of speech, sayings, and traditions that has since passed from local memory.

In recent years, those seeking to access Bailiúchán Béaloidis Árann have been supported on an ad hoc basis by islanders. With the present initiative, Bailiúchán Béaloidis Árann is being placed on a more permanent and more sustainable footing. As a stand-alone website hosted on the parent website dúchas.ie (the National Folklore Collection digitization project, a joint project by UCD and DCU), users can engage with a specially designed resource showcasing Bailiúchán Béaloidis Árann. This new platform generates access to the collection not only for the people of Árainn near and far but also for people interested in folklore, history, traditions, and culture. The collection can now serve scholars, artists, and the public more easily and in an appropriate manner.

Hosted online alongside the riches of the National Folklore Collection and through linkages to other web resources, Bailiúchán Béaloidis Árann is guaranteed discoverability and recognition as a repository of national and international significance.

Bairbre Uí Chonaill

Áine Uí Fhlaithearta

Paper short abstract:

This paper will discuss how a folklore archive and research centre are trying to find ways of dealing with the lack of information about Indigenous peoples' past and present in their holdings on the example of outreach and collection projects at the Kule Folklore Centre, University of Alberta.

Paper long abstract:

This paper will present how a folklore archive and research centre are trying to find creative approaches to dealing with the lack of information about Indigenous peoples' in their holdings. This will be done using examples of outreach and collection projects at the Kule Folklore Centre and its Bohdan Medwidsky Ukrainian Folklore Archives. The first example is an exhibition about childhood on the Canadian Prairies in the 1930s based on the large collection of interviews representing perspectives of multiple ethnic groups but with "missing" Indigenous peoples. The second example is a children's book inspired by the same collection. Finally, the third example is an online collecting project, which uses the Internet Archive's Archive-It tool. The project focuses on shared Indigenous-Ukrainian stories in Canada generally, and on the floral scarf (khustka), which was traditionally worn as a headwear or shawl by Ukrainian settlers and Indigenous peoples on the Prairies, specifically. These examples will demonstrate what can be done when archival evidence is missing, how a space for Indigenous stories and histories can be intentionally created, and how such small steps may help advance cultural equity and contribute to the work of righting historical wrongs.

Paper short abstract:

The Rromanó akhepát - the Archives of the Romany nation - aims, also, to provide researchers with adequate clarifications, explanations and translations made by Romany specialists themselves because the main task is to make the Romany ethnology a real tool for the development of the Romany nation.

Paper long abstract:

The Romany ethnology as a part of Romany studies uses empirical works published in the last 200 years in dozens of different languages. The latter fact usually makes it difficult for scholars from different countries, different scientific schools and areas to understand each other. The Romany archives, in addition to the traditional task of collecting and preserving original and derived sources, aims to provide researchers with adequate clarifications, explanations and translations made by Romany specialists themselves, since they are the ones who know and understand the Romany life, psychology, and aspirations not by songs, books, movies, or archival documents. The Rromanó akhepát, i.e. the Archives of the Romany nation, which the author and colleagues run since 2011 in traditional "paper" form and in modern electronic form, already has a certain number of collections which can be used for ethnology research purposes. These materials come from different sources including copies from public and private archives. Among these records there are statistic, linguistic, folklore, literary fiction and poetry, written and oral history. We have photo, video and audio archives, too; and last component of the Rromanó akhepát is the printed media archive: the Romany part includes 95 newspapers/magazines names and 1579 entries, and the non-Romany part has over 5000 articles from 189 sources in 58 countries. Another area of our work is the Romany library which already has over 7 thousand e-records (books, articles, reports, programs, laws, documents, etc.). We hope to web-represent this rich diversity but, however, after the war.

Paper short abstract:

In this case study we demonstrate how we are using innovative digital technologies - namely AI-based handwritten text recognition, coupled with community participation via the web - to provide enhanced access to university-based Scottish and Irish folklore archives.

Paper long abstract:

The School of Scottish Studies Archives (University of Edinburgh), and the Irish National Folklore Collection (University College Dublin), together comprise a vast collection of Scottish and Irish traditional narrative. As part of the Decoding Hidden Heritages project, which seeks to create, analyse and disseminate a large Scottish-Irish textual corpus of folktales from within these archives, access to the oral narrative-based riches contained within the archives will be greatly improved for both researchers and members of the public by virtue of enhanced full-text search. AI-based handwritten text recognition (HTR) technology coupled with community participation, whereby community volunteers work to enhance the HTR AI models, is being deployed to achieve this outcome.

This enhanced digital corpus can be utilised by the living communities, from whom these tales were first collected. As part of wider efforts for linguistic and cultural renewal, such resources can elucidate collective understanding of local aesthetics through socially driven re-collection, reconnecting the archives with the active transmission of intergenerational knowledge systems. Beyond simply being a means for understanding the past (and the text serving as additional training data), this digital resource will unveil pathways in and out of the archives for the creative potential of storytelling as collective wealth, from the streaming lines of a formulaic run to the accrued performance and resulting organic variation of given narrative between performances and performers. Ultimately, community members, researchers and learners alike can actively participate and transform these artforms, providing opportunities for resilient and rooted expressions of identity in the contemporary world.

Paper short abstract:

The digitizing and open access of archival materials raise a wide variety of questions. The archives must lavish between the interests of individuals and the presumptions of communities that folklore is their heritage. The paper focuses on specific problems of representation in public databases.

Paper long abstract:

The intention of the founding of Estonian folklore collections in the 19th century was to create one large imaginary community, eventually a nation, joining small local communities through a common goal. The idea was to collect folklore, evanescent antiquities, from local communities and then "give it back" in the form of academic or popular publications.

The community of Estonian folklore collections, however, consists of communities of 107 parishes, hundreds of municipalities and villages, and thousands of individuals. Individuals are both collectors, narrators, and singers, as well as characters of narratives. Just as the religious, educational, and economic backgrounds of individuals have undergone major changes, so have the communities. Modern local communities may not share any knowledge, mentalities, genealogies, nor languages with the former ones.

Today, archivists confront quite different problems than 150 years ago, as the digitisation and open access of old archival materials in the public databases raises a wide variety of questions regarding copyright and the protection of sensitive personal data. In addition, the archives must lavish between the interests of the individuals on the one hand, and the legitimate presumptions by communities of folklore as their intangible heritage and the availability of knowledge on the other. The paper gives examples of specific problems of conflicting representations of local communities and individuals, the solution of which is not just closure and hiding.

Paper short abstract:

This case study asks why marginalized groups, such as non-white communities or deprived people are under-represented in questionnaire initiatives in Folklore Archives of SKS. Despite the idea of community engagement, questionnaires issued by SKS have often been planned top-down by academic scholars.

Paper long abstract:

Folklore Archives of the Finnish Literature Society (SKS) has over a century long history of receiving and preserving folklore and speech genres of expressive culture. Whereas early manuscripts were collected with a pen and paper by educated elite, a more recent approach to collecting traditions is ethnographic questionnaires. Today most of the materials sent to the SKS are in written (electronic) form and from the communities of origin. Questionnaires enable to collecting large amounts of material on a particular subject. Until today, SKS has issued 385 questionnaires resulting tens of thousands of responses from a diversity of people with various socioeconomic and cultural backgrounds. With the questionnaires SKS has worked to increase instances of previously unrepresented and underrepresented people once hidden from grand national narratives. However, despite the idea of community engagement and cultural memory from below -approach, questionnaires issued by SKS have often been planned top-down by the academic researchers who initiate which topic questionnaires should deal with. Although questionnaires as the form of narrative encourage people telling of their own stories and understanding, communities of origin themselves rarely propose a questionnaire initiative. Marginalized groups, such as non-white communities or people with low socioeconomic position are under-represented in questionnaire initiatives. In my presentation, I discuss more on the power structures, derived from SKS Archives' history in which the educational elite decides about topics and genres worth to collect, and its challenges in conducting more participatory archiving.

Paper short abstract:

In March 2022 the Estonian Folklore Archives created a public Facebook group "Ukrainian Memes" to collect war-related memes and other folklore. The paper observes the group’s activities from the perspective of the administrators and highlights the factors with the greatest impact on collecting.

Paper long abstract:

The group "Ukrainian Memes" (https://www.facebook.com/groups/534314991238265) is very popular, it has 8,500 members and had 7,600 posts by 1 January 2023. At times, however, the need to intervene makes it impossible to combine the roles of administrators and neutral archival workers. Although the initial aim was to record the meme lore, the group has become a site of communal interaction on the topic, allowing the members to express themselves and let off steam, Although the group’s rules specify that the memes are being collected for research purposes, some group members consider it important to share their opinions and obtain a broad resonance to these. As could be expected, the news and memes posted are predominantly anti-war.

The presentation will also discuss Facebook as a site for folkloristic collecting activities. The group members are dissatisfied with Facebook’s (AI) activity in selecting what constitutes spam and blocking posters; under the conditions of war of aggression observing Facebook’s principles regarding hate speech may prove a problem. On the other hand, many group members’ sense of justice is hurt when memes condoning the aggression are retained. On many accounts seeking a balance is very subjective, which is why having several administrators is useful.

The war in Ukraine is a topic that people care about. An archival worker cannot initiate folklore collection on the topic and remain a bystander. As many other collecting activities, conducting folklore collecting in a Facebook group means participating in the life of a (virtual) community.