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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.

Institute of Ethnology and Folklore Research (IEF) has the largest and unique Archive of intangible cultural heritage in Croatia. From the establishment of the IEF in 1948, its scientists began to create a collection that now includes extensive cursive, video and audio material on the traditional culture of the Croats and various minorities collected and recorded in all regions of Croatia, as well as the expatriated Croats. The collection of unique and rare melographic notations of traditional music is a part of this collection. Their tremendous value and a high degree of vulnerability are the reasons why this part of Institute’s Archive is, along with audio recordings, on the top of the list of priorities for digitization. In this paper, a collection of original materials, its uniqueness and importance, along with the method of their digitization and processing is presented. Emphasis is on the challenges of identification of digital images and their connection with the original records, as well as on the storage, presentation and access to digital content.

About the unique collection of folklore and ethnographic documents archived in the Institute of ethnology and folklore research, especially about the music archive and its digitization, with emphasis on current problems, temporary solutions and future challenges.

Sixty years of the Institute's existence cannot be described as a mere institutional persistence – it is the history of changes, a perpetuation of paradigmatic shifts. My intention is to rethink those changes. Hence there is a perturbation, a turn-about in the title of the paper. Challenging integration refers mainly to our present situation while my survey comprises diachronic approach. I would rather describe the past six decades as a continuous and complex process of integrating diverse theoretical, political, ethical and other challenges within our small scholarly community, in order to trace that subtle and hidden link which forms the actual identity of our Institute and makes us recognizable both in domestic and in European context., Šezdeset godina postojanja Instituta ne može se opisati kao puka ustrajnost ustanove – to je povijest promjena, kontinuitet smjena paradigmi. Rad iznova razmatra te mijene pa u naslov priopćenja namjerno unosi zbrku, zamjenjuje pojmove. Izazovi integracije uglavnom prizivaju naše sadašnje stanje, a pregled podrazumijeva dijakronijski pristup. Čini se primjerenijim opisati prošlih šest desetljeća kao neprekidan i složen proces integracije, uključivanja različitih teorijskih, političkih, etičkih i drugih izazova u našoj maloj znanstvenoj zajednici. Pokušava pratiti tu krhku, skrivenu poveznicu koja desetljećima gradi današnji identitet Instituta i čini ga prepoznatljivim u domaćem i europskom kontekstu.

The booklet presents the history of the Institute of Ethnology and Folklore Research in Zagreb and current research projects.

This presentation is an overview of dance research projects and activities of the Institute of Ethnology and Folklore Research in Croatia, 1996-1998. One of the activities is the annual International Folklore Festival held in July in Zagreb. The festival is guided by personnel from the Institute, which initiated a thematic approach to the festival in coordination with the Ethnographic Museum in Zagreb, different regional museums all over Croatia and film and television archives.

The authors present the theoretical approaches along with the practice and results of ethnologists who have been active at the Institute over the past decades. During that period, ethnological output constantly grew and opened up new questions, changing both the theoretical approaches to the subject, and the subject itself. One of the trends of those ethnological efforts defined its attitude towards history in a new way, and the other drew nearer to epistemological research and the postmodern questionability of the very essence of ethnological scholarship — its text and writing.

The author traces 50 years of the work at the Institute of Ethnology and Folklore Research.

Autorice osvjetljuju teorijska polazišta i opisuju ishode prakse etnologa koji su proteklih desetljeća djelovali u Institutu. Premda u času osnivanja Instituta za narodnu umjetnost (6. 2. 1948.) etnološki rad još nije bio predviđen, ubrzo su se za njega stvorili preduvjeti, temeljeni na potrebi istraživanja konteksta folklornim pojavama. Od 60-tih godina radikalnoj se kritici podvrgava dotad prevladavajuća kulturno-historijska teorijska orijentacija. Počinju se tražiti novi putevi, izraženi u 70-tinia projektom Istraživanje interakcije folklornih tradicija i suvremene kulture, a obilježeni strukturalističkim i poststrukturalističkim trendovima. Od prvotno zadanoga, a tada već ograničavajućeg istraživanja običaja, u 80-tim se godinama điversificiraju teme istraživanja i primjenjuju mnogovrsni kulturnoantropološki pristupi u rasponu od propitivanja komunikacijskih procesa do povijesnih demografskih proučavanja. Paralelno se popunjavaju i dotadašnje praznine u hrvatskoj etnološkoj produkciji izradom monografija, i to: timsko--interdisciplinarnih, lokalnih ili regionalnih, odnosno autorskih tematskih. Početak devedesetih, obilježen hrvatskom ratnom zbiljom, rezultira pak radovima postmodernog senzibiliteta da bi se, prema kraju dvadesetog stoljeća, nametnula potreba dekonstrukcije hrvatske etnologije. Ukratko: tijekom gotovo peđesetgođišnjeg razdoblja etnološka je proizvodnja u Institutu neprekidno rasla i neprekidno otvarala nova pitanja, mijenjajući i teorijske pristupe i sam predmet. Jedna je struja tih etnoloških napora na nov način definirala svoj odnos prema povijesti, a druga se odvojila od izrazito povijesnih pitanja i približila epistemološkim istraživanjima te postmodernoj upitanosti o samoj srži etnološke znanosti — o njezinu tekstu i pismu., The authors present the theoretical approaches along with the practice and results of ethnologists who have been active at the Institute over the past decades. During that period, ethnological output constantly grew and opened up new questions, changing both the theoretical approaches to the subject, and the subject itself. One of the trends of those ethnological efforts defined its attitude towards history in a new way, and the other drew nearer to epistemological research and the postmodern que st ion ability of the very essence of ethnological scholarship — its text and writing.

The Institute of Ethnology and Folklore Research is the only institution in the Republic of Croatia in which ethnomusicological research has been carried out - in the sense of research subject (folk music / folklore music / traditional music / music) and/or in the sense of the approach that connects music and culture. During the 1990s the paradigm of any music in any context became legitimate but also the individualisation of conceptions, approaches and research themes. In between the principle of researching the plurality of music and music-making and the more narrow priorities of the profession, it is possible to single out several groups of themes and several approach features that appear as a special characteristic of this decade: manifoldness and changebility of folklore ; traditional music and its role in the construction of the identity ; music and music-making of recently invisible human groups ; music and power in the context of war ; de/re-construction of (Croatian) ethnomusicology and applied ethnomusicology.

Prior to the establishment of the Institute, rare and modest in volume ethnomusicological research was carried out by the Department for Folk Music of the Ethnographic Museum in Zagreb (1921-1948) while folk songs were collected by the Archive of Folk Songs of the Croatian Authors' Association in Zagreb (1943-1945). In its Department for Musical Folklore the Institute (1948- ) with well-organized external associates collected a large volume of material in the first twenty years of its existence. In the seventies the research approach widened. Research was conducted of older and newer forms, of the manifoldness and diversity of folk music and dance, of the continuity and changes in tradition, of processes of acculturation and transformation of musical and dance phenomena. By accepting and applying the theory of communication in the eighties the subject of ethnomusicological researches started to be determined according to the specific way of life of musical and dance phenomena in the direct communication of relatively small groups of performers and listeners.